


The Soiled Doves

by fernybranca



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Byronic Heroes Are Dumb But We Love Them, Canonical Character Death, Churches & Cathedrals, Cunnilingus, Dogs, England (Country), F/M, Gothic, Horses, Le Bon Ton, Making Out, Marriage, Marriage of Convenience, Mommy Issues, Pregnancy, Regency, Regency Romance, Vaginal Sex, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 114,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fernybranca/pseuds/fernybranca
Summary: Luck raised Miss Rey Jakku from the streets into the household of Baron Luke Skywalker, and he willed her a fortune beyond the dreams of wealth—earning her the eternal hatred of Benjamin Kylo Skywalker Organa Solo, His Grace of Alderaan, who had counted on his uncle's money to rebuild his ruined ducal seat. But hatred bleeds into obsession, obsession into love, and the rules of the haut ton are strict...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [destinies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/gifts).



> Please note that the primary pairing in this story is Reylo. The secondary pairing is Finn/Poe/Rose - it's very important to the plot but not as emotionally central.
> 
> Many thanks to [verity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity) and Anastasia for their support and idea-bouncing-off, and to [RJ Anderson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RJ_Anderson/pseuds/RJ_Anderson) and [Fandomme](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/108772/Fandomme) for being truly excellent betas.
> 
> Cover by [Proporgo](http://proporgo.tumblr.com)

Miss Rey Jakku was eighteen years old, and she had no one in the world. “Jakku” was the name of the house in which the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls was established, a name she had taken because she had no other to claim. She was not as badly off it might seem, having been taken from the Asylum at the age of ten by Luke Skywalker, Baron Skywalker; he had stood as her father, though legally she was no more than his ward; but word had come last night that he had died, and now, as the first wave of grief subsided, she knew she had to begin to look out for herself.

It was hard, though, to imagine how.

Then again, it was also hard to imagine how Luke—for so she had always called him, though she had little right—had died of the putrid sore throat, and in London, the place he hated most of any. He was not an old man, nor a weak one, and when she tried to imagine his craggy, lopsided, sweet face relaxing in death, her entire mind revolted. Yet she knew it must be true.

Rey sat up, realizing that she was still in her dress and loosened stays. She had cried and cried and cried, and fallen asleep crying. She remembered taking off her shoes, the better to curl up on the bed, but now they were nowhere to be seen. Had Bebe come in in the night? She must have.

Thinking of her maid tied Rey’s stomach in knots again: Bebe’s last mistress had been cruel, pinching and slapping her and turning her off without a reference, leaving her stranded in —shire with no money and no way back across the ocean to her family. Luke’s justification in hiring her had been that Bebe would help Rey learn to speak _à la Parisienne_ ; the truth was, he had a soft heart.

Once Rey had imagined that she and Bebe would go to London someday, and that with the assistance of her fashionable French maid she’d take the town by storm. Now, she thought, that was very unlikely to happen. But then, it had always been unlikely to happen. Without a history, a name, or a penny beyond Luke’s generosity, she could hardly expect to be received by the _haut ton,_ or even by the lesser lights of Society.

But she had been quite lucky enough to escape the Asylum in the first place, she reminded herself. Not everyone was even so lucky as to have a bed _at_ the Asylum, and she knew from experience that being a child on the street was far worse than being a child in an institution, no matter how squalid.

In any case, she was neither on the street nor in an institution today _,_ and for the meantime that was all that could be said. She vaguely understood that there must have been a funeral in London; she had never met Luke’s family, though she had some sense that they existed, and could hardly expect to have been invited or warned. The man sent to Ahch-To Hall had only borne a message for the servants, not a word spared for Rey. If there had been a funeral, then the Will had been read, surely?

To distract herself from this thought, Rey stood and walked to her window, throwing the curtains open. It was a bright, beautiful late-autumn day, unseasonably warm, the morning sun glinting off Ahch-To Hall’s emerald lawns where they rolled down to the sea-cliffs. The puffins that sometimes darted and played by the shore all seemed to be gone, the babies fledged by this late in the year, but a gull wheeled overhead, crying so loud that Rey could hear it through the thick windowpane. If she could see round the corner of the house, Rey was sure Luke’s pride, the canal, would be filled with barges, laden with the year’s harvest, headed south to the seaport.

The Will has surely been read, she told herself. And in it…?

It seemed cold-hearted to even think about. Luke had told her nothing of how his fortune might be bestowed, and she could only assume she had no part of it. Someone else would inherit Ahch-To Hall. She would plead her case to them, ask for forbearance, for some time to find a position. She would be a governess, she supposed. She ought to find a paper, a London paper, and place an advertisement, or answer one. There would be more need for governesses in the city.

Really it would be better to be a housekeeper. Rey enjoyed working with Luke’s housekeeper, Mrs. Hester. Since she was barely fifteen she had ordered the menus, managed the servants, ensured that everything was clean and in its place. But housekeepers were older women, and almost always married, or widows, or pretending to be widows. Rey did not think she could pretend to be a widow.

There was a tentative knock on the door. “ _Mademoiselle…?_ Ah, but you look better…!”

Rey submitted to Bebe’s ministrations, and came downstairs, and gave the speech she needed to give to the household, a speech about carrying on, and doing our jobs, and waiting for news from the new master, whoever he might be; she went round to the tenants and made sure they had heard the news, and knew they were thought of and looked after; and so she buried herself in the day-to-day work of caring for Baron Skywalker’s country seat, whoever Baron Skywalker might be now that Luke was dead.

* * *

It was two weeks later and Rey’s petticoats were eight inches deep in mud, Rey being engaged in helping pull a dog-cart out of said mud, when she learned what was to happen to Ahch-To Hall.

The dog-cart was carrying parts for the great Boulton and Watt steam engine that kept the canal topped-up with water, and Rey was most anxious to see them to their destination. They were hardly more than a mile from Temple Water when the cart had become mired, and Rey had nearly screamed with frustration: the pump was not in steam, and would not _be_ in steam until she could effect repairs, and she could not effect repairs without the proper parts…

“Miss Jakku! Miss Jakku,” came the voice of Mr. Corm, the steward of the Hall, and she looked up to see him positively running towards her, blowing like a horse at the end of a race. He had come from the house, she supposed, a distance of two miles—but what could possess such a stout man to run so far? He caught his breath and gave her an answer: “The Master has come!”

“Who?” she asked stupidly, wiping her brow with a dirty hand. Her clothes had been altered for mourning too quickly, and the dye had not set properly; she was sure she’d find black smudges all over when she went to bathe that night.

“His Grace Benjamin Solo of Alderaan!”

“What is the Duke of Alderaan doing here?” she said, trying hard not to become as flustered as the old steward.

“He has inherited!”

Rey left Mr. Corm behind to deal with the dog-cart, the matter of the steam engine almost forgotten.

She tried, as she hurried back to the house, to memorize everything she saw. She knew nothing of the Duke of Alderaan. Was he old or young? Kind or cruel? What was his relation to Luke? No nearer than a nephew, but her guardian had never spoken of him, so perhaps much farther. This might be the last time she walked this path, or almost the last, if he were disposed to settle there himself—though she could not believe he would do that; surely a person as exalted as a Duke would have other, more fashionable estates in which to stay. Still, as the white bulk of the Hall hove into view, and the sea-cliffs and the rolling lawns and all the rest of it, she tried her best to impress it upon her mind, so that no matter what should happen she would have a perfect picture of her home.

The picture was marred by a black travelling-coach bearing a gaudy coat-of-arms and standing directly before the house’s entrance. A tall black stallion was held by a groom, as well as the coach-horses: the new master had ridden at least part of the way, leaving his coach to follow behind. The servants were arrayed, such as they were, on the steps; Rey could imagine the panic belowstairs as Mrs. Hester learned of their new master’s unannounced arrival. Even from a distance Rey could see that Bebe’s cap, its jaunty orange riband exchanged for black, was askew on her head: she must have been napping when the order came to turn out for inspection.

Then the man himself stepped around the carriage, and Rey slowed, hoping to divine something of his character from his appearance.

In his body he was conventionally attractive. He appeared to advantage in the prevailing fashion of skin tight pantaloons, although he eschewed color in his dress as well as in his carriage: no blue coat for this mournful Duke but black superfine, immaculately cut and in superb contrast with his snow-white linen. Such a thoroughly dark costume was vaguely ridiculous, Rey thought, for a man who’d scarcely seen his uncle in years. His shoulders were wide and his waist narrow, and his hands seemed impossibly large where they curled around his riding crop. Something in the tension of his forearms, even from so far away, rang warning bells in Rey’s mind. His Grace was infuriated.

He had sensed her presence. He turned his head, and she was finally close enough to see him properly. He was not a handsome man, but a striking one. His best feature was his hair, dark and thick, waving luxuriantly back from his brow; it was perhaps longer than fashion might dictate, but Rey supposed that he could be forgiven if he were vain about this one element of his appearance. The rest of his face was an odd collation of parts, an ivory complexion, deep-set eyes, a long Roman nose, lips fuller than a lady’s. Not a comfortable face, but one that a portrait painter might successfully flatter, and one that surely many _did_ flatter: he was Alderaan.

And because he was Alderaan, she realized, he was accustomed to getting his way.

“Who is this?” he asked, though surely he must have known.

Mrs. Hester, standing at the head of the line of servants, bobbed a curtsey, surely only one of many she’d made in the few minutes since His Grace had arrived. “Miss Rey Jakku, Your Grace,” she said. “His lordship’s ward.”

The Duke lifted his chin and looked down at her; he hardly needed to do so, being half a foot taller than she was and wearing riding boots besides. “The girl that Mr. Corm was so eager to find that he could not stay to greet me. I had been led to believe that Miss Jakku was a lady,” he said.

“Your Grace,” Mrs. Hester began, and then fell silent. What could she say? Rey realized she hadn’t had a chance to let her skirts down. Her petticoats were on display, bad enough, and they were absolutely filthy; she was soaking with sweat from heaving the dog-cart. She thought of how she’d wiped her forehead when Mr. Corm had come to bring her the news: she had mud on her face as well, she’d wager.

“I had been led to believe,” he said, hardly trying to conceal his examination of Rey’s person, “that she would have the sense to be gone—” he punctuated the statement with a crack of his crop on his thigh— “before I arrived at Ahch-To Hall.”

A noise began to ring in Rey’s ears, a noise she had not heard since she was a little girl on the streets and a gang of older boys had threatened her only friend. It was the blood, she thought, pumping in her ear-drums; it meant her ire was up; it meant that she was liable to do or say anything. How dare he speak to her so, when she had been caring for his estate these two weeks, caring for it with the actual sweat of her brow? She heard herself say, as if from a long way away, “ _I_ had been led to believe that Dukes were persons of good manners and breeding, but I fear the world is full of liars, and I should not have been deceived for even a minute by your fine carriage and cattle and your Weston coat!”

“I have not come here to be insulted by an _orphan,_ ” he said, spitting the word as though it were in itself an insult.

“I have not invited you to come here at all!”

“I need no invitation. This house belongs to me. The very bed you sleep on belongs to me.”

“And yet, somehow, I do not belong to you,” Rey said, crossing her arms over her thin bosom in defiance of the manners she’d been taught, “and as a free person, I may object to boorishness when and where I see it.”

“You are surely an expert on the subject,” the Duke sneered, “living with my uncle for so long. Does he still insist on saying grace until all the food has gone cold? Does he cross the street when he sees a worldly woman? Or did he give up his piousness when faced with temptation?”

It took Rey a moment to parse this little speech, for the man the Duke described bore no resemblance to the Luke she knew, but when she grasped the implication of his final sentence she felt her face turning as red as an apple. She found herself shouting. “You are no gentleman! To imply that I am a—a _bit of muslin_ is too much! You will retract your words and apologize or—or—or I shall call you out!”

He ought to have laughed, she thought, at such an ineffectual statement. Ladies did not call out gentlemen; homeless and penniless orphans even less. But he did not. He seemed chastened. His eyes glanced off Rey’s face, down and to the right.

“Well done,” came a stranger’s voice. “It’s been many a year since anyone has stood up to him with such gumption!”

Rey turned. Another carriage had pulled up in the drive as they fought, a hired carriage with mismatched horses, and from it had issued a small stout woman with brown-and-silver hair. She was dressed practically and stylishly, if not in the first stare of fashion, in mourning clothes somewhat less solemn than the Duke’s, and she seemed quite at ease interposing herself into even the most heated arguments.

“Mother,” the Duke said.

“Miss Jakku,” the woman said. “I apologize for the imposition. My name is Lady Leia Solo. I don’t suppose my brother Luke…?”

Luke’s _sister?_

Rey examined her again, more closely this time. There was a resemblance about the eyes: something lively there, beyond the ordinary. Now that it was brought to her attention, she could see that the Duke had it too, though in him it was a malevolent glimmer rather than a cheerful twinkle.

“You’re very welcome here, Lady Leia,” Rey said, gathering some shred of dignity. “Perhaps we should all go inside and have a cup of tea. I find that after a long journey, a cup of tea is always welcome, and it will help us mend our tempers.”

The Duke snorted at her inanities. “You must stop that, Miss Jakku. I see no need to invite you or my mother into my home.”

“Ben,” Lady Leia said, with breathtaking rudeness, “must I remind you that I turned you over my knee when you were a little boy, and I can do it again?”

His full mouth tightened to a thin line. Rey stifled a giggle.

“Now,” Leia continued, “I believe some tea sounds delightful. You must forgive my son. He’s just been dealt a very bad blow, you see.”

“A bad blow?” Rey echoed back.  

“A very bad blow,” she said, her voice full of humor. “You see, he may be the Duke of Alderaan, but his estates are universally in disrepair and his pockets out to let. Now he has inherited Ahch-To Hall, its roof, its tenants, its canal, and especially its steam engine, which I suppose must frequently break down and require very expensive repairs. But all of my brother Luke’s money, his pots and pots of glorious cash money, has been willed to you.”

* * *

So after not too long a span of hours Benjamin Kylo Skywalker Organa Solo, His Grace of Alderaan, Marquess of Ren, Baron Skywalker, known as “Ren” to his friends, stood in the front doorway of Ahch-To Hall and watched as his mother’s hired coach disappeared into the distance, carrying away (along with Lady Leia herself) Miss Rey Jakku, her maid Bebe, and a trunk containing all of Miss Jakku’s worldly goods.

He had made an ass of himself, an ignominious ass. But he had found it impossible to control himself when he had come to find the house in disarray—he still wondered what had happened to his messenger—the steward gone, and the housekeeper insisting that “Rey would know what to do!”

Using the girl’s Christian name was abominable license on part of the housekeeper, and if she had been in Ren’s employ for more than a week’s span he would have turned her out on her ear. But it accorded well with his assumptions about his uncle’s ward, namely that she was a gutter-born lightskirt, ignorant of all manners and all breeding, her whole being bent on seducing pious Lord Skywalker and laying her filthy hands on his fortune.

Miss Jakku’s appearance and comportment had not accorded with his assumptions. “Filthy” was correct. He could not imagine what she had been doing to be sunk so deep in mud, or to have her hair in such disarray. But her cheeks were flushed with health and exercise, her eyes bright; she had carried herself like a young queen, regardless of the ugly job that had been made of dyeing her frock, and regardless of his most imperious manner. If his uncle _had_ kept the girl as a mistress (and Ren was now certain he had not) it would have been a mark of much better taste than he had ever previously shown.

But Ren knew his own taste was hardly unimpeachable. He flattered himself that he was a throwback to nobler days of his family line, combining the grace and nobility of his Organa grandparents with the fierce propriety of his grandfather Anakin Skywalker; but he had inherited something of his mother’s wildness and his hated father’s common blood. His judgment could not be trusted. What would Lady Snoke think of the girl?

Too tall, she would say. Too outspoken. It was highly irregular that she was neither in the schoolroom nor out in society; who ever heard of a girl keeping house for anyone at that age? She must be rather too knowing for a true gentleman’s taste. That was what Lady Snoke would say.

But then, money was a great inducement. And the girl had money. The Skywalker money. Perhaps Lady Snoke would moderate her criticisms. Perhaps she would think that the girl was quite eligible.

Ren felt his hands curling into fists. He needed to ride, or shoot, or fight, if any of the grooms were trained in fisticuffs and willing to risk damaging their new master. He needed to do _something_ to work off this abominable surge of energy. It was Miss Jakku’s fault, he knew.

And she had gone to London with his havey-cavey mother, who would certainly not moderate her impertinence, and who would surely help her spend her money on becoming dresses, and who might well contrive to have her welcomed into Society as soon as the mourning-time for his uncle was over. He might meet her anywhere, were he to come to town for the Season. And quite apart from taking his seat in Parliament, he was obliged to come to town for the Season. After all, the great house at Duke’s Alderaan needed a new roof (at the barest minimum—not to mention the squalid cottages of its tenants, whom he never thought of if he could help it), the steam engine at Ahch-To Hall needed mending if the canal ever was to turn a profit, his valet had begun leaving tailors’ bills on his desk as helpful reminders of sums owed. He needed a rich wife.

It would not _,_ he swore, be Miss Rey Jakku, formerly of Ahch-To Hall, however bright her eyes and whatever the source of her money.

Nevertheless, there was no escaping the acquaintance now.

  
Illustration by [Proporgo](http://proporgo.tumblr.com)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super overwhelmed at the kind comments I've gotten so far! ICYMI, I'm updating this story every Tuesday, so I'll see you all on May 1! In the meantime, if you want to chat about Reylo or Regency romance, you can now find me on Twitter as [@fernybranca](http://www.twitter.com/fernybranca). (Please find me on Twitter. I have feelings that must be expressed.) 
> 
> If you haven't seen the many-years-old Star Wars Regency AU fan art by therealmcgee, you should take a look. In large part, it's what inspired this story, especially the images of [Finn and Poe](http://therealmcgee.tumblr.com/post/139160253034/star-wars-regency-au-finn-and-poe), [Kylo](http://therealmcgee.tumblr.com/post/138517783269/regency-au-kylo) and [Rey](http://therealmcgee.tumblr.com/post/138389694649/an-elegant-weapon-for-a-more-civilized-age-because).

When Rey had first come to Ahch-To Hall, the change in her circumstances had been so great that she could only conceive of it in fairy-tale terms. She was a child, after all, and had suffered more pain and sadness in her short life than some did in a hundred years. The simplest muslin dress was as a silken ballgown to her, because it had a golden riband at its waist. Bread-and-honey was as fine as airy cake, because there were unlimited quantities to feed her starveling little frame. Luke’s love was the love of a father, because she had never known her father.

As she grew a little older, of course, she came to understand that there was a great world outside the sea-shore of the north, that Ahch-To Hall was a remote corner of the world, and that Luke was not her father, but her master—a kindly master, but with no blood tie. He had plucked her out of the orphanage not for her sake but for his, as some atonement for a great fault, though she was innocent of what that fault might be. So she started to dream of her parents, her real parents, again, and now she imagined them in the gentry, having lost her through mischance, and having spent years searching for her. Some day, when she went to London, fate would bring them and her to the same grand house for the same grand ball; they would know her by her bearing, and they would praise Luke for his care of her, and they would all be friends, and all would be well in the world.

After Luke’s death Rey could not help but remember these childhood dreams, and think of them, and wonder. Could Luke have truly been her father? Or someone else he knew? Why else would he give her his fortune? Yet why would he never have told her?

Auntie Leia—for so Rey was soon calling her—could not answer these questions, when Rey put them to her in as delicate a manner as possible, but she was a great storyteller and more than willing to share what she could. Rey had had hints of Luke’s glorious past, of course: he kept a pair of duelling-sabers crossed above the hearth in the family sitting room, and refused to speak of them; occasionally some young man would find his way to the Hall and beg audience with Lord Skywalker, to be rebuffed on the instant. Leia told her of his famous meetings-at-dawn, of how he was known as the White Knight (though he had never been a knight, of course; it was only a nickname), of the great revelation of his parentage and the fact that they were twins, and of how he forswore Society and dedicated himself to prayer, meditation, and good works.

“So you see,” she said, “we did always share that particular bond that twins have; but not having grown up together, we found it quite reasonable to be parted for long periods of time. And I have no taste for rustication, my dear!”

Leia, it seemed had been a Scandal from the moment she stepped out of the schoolroom. Her adoptive father Bail Organa, Duke of Alderaan, had been a political force to be reckoned with, and had allowed her to accompany him to Parliament and even work with him on his speeches, eschewing the Marriage Mart; then he had lost his money and retired to the country in shame; and rather than mending their fortunes by finding an eligible husband with deep pockets, she had met a dashing young sea-captain named Han Solo, and eloped to Gretna Green.

“His Grace’s father is a sea-captain?”

“And a mere merchantman, not in His Majesty’s Navy, what is more. I don’t believe Ben has ever forgiven him for it.”

“Surely you had something to do with it?”

Leia laughed. “At least half the blame should fall on me! But my son purports to believe that the lesser sex needs guidance and care; in his mind the fault is all my husband and my father’s.”

“Purports to believe?”

Leia glanced out the window, and Rey felt guilty for raising the subject. From their short interactions, it was clear that His Grace of Alderaan had little patience with his mother. “We have shared a carriage for many hours now: do you believe he can truly own such an opinion, with _me_ for his mother?”

She had a point.

Rey liked Auntie Leia—loved her, before long, though occasionally she wondered if it was Leia she loved or the world in which Leia lived. After the rural seclusion of Ahch-To Hall, London was a constant whirl of intriguing sights and sounds. She was permitted to go walking only with both maid and footman, even should she go no further than the park to let Leia’s wheezing old dog run, but that was no trouble; it gave Bebe a chance to flirt. Even the stench hardly bothered her: it was new, and newness was something that had been sadly absent from her life, with all Luke’s kindnesses.

And Luke was not the only one who could be kind. On New Year’s Day, when Rey traditionally celebrated her birthday (not knowing the true date), Leia asked what she would like to do, and they spent the entire day wandering through London, neighborhood upon neighborhood which neither of them had ever seen before. Snow had freshly fallen, and it seemed a fairyland to Rey, who only realized what a trial the long walk had been to Leia when they returned home and the older lady fell asleep before the fire on the instant. She was nineteen, and she felt very different from the girl she had been at Ahch-To Hall: cleverer, braver, more cosmopolitan. She was a Londoner now!

Then, too, there were Leia’s friends, writers and publishers and philosophers and diplomats and naturalists and artists, all rather political, all unacceptable to high sticklers. Some lived in quite irregular ménages; some swore their atheism; some did both; the famous Lord Byron was rumored to have attended Lady Leia’s salons, though Rey saw neither hide nor hair of him, Leia having instructed him in the direst terms to keep his scandals far away from her new protegée. Rey had never heard such a diversity of opinion, nor realized there were so many ways to _be_ in the world. The only thing lacking was friends Rey’s own age.

Back at Ahch-To Hall, when she was merely Luke’s ward, she had never been lonely. He had neighbors whom she was allowed to call upon, and they welcomed her to their country balls and entertainments. She began to realize that those friends were lost to her when she received their first letters, however. Their amusements seemed drab and obligatory, and their hopes of visiting her in the Metropolis faint. Even if their parents scraped together the money for a London Season, an unlikely occurrence, they would never be allowed to consort with Rey: either because she was a scandal-by-association with Leia, or because she was too likely to steal their beaux, being worth many times what they were.

So Rey determined that she would have her own London Season, this being the best way to meet other young women; she would dance at Almack’s and eat ices at Gunter’s and all the rest; she might enjoy Auntie Leia’s friends’ company at any other time of the year, but from February to June she would devote herself to her fellow youths.

 

* * *

 

Before she débuted, however, Rey had one task before her.

It came to her attention quite unexpectedly. Auntie Leia had brought her along on in a party to Vauxhall Gardens, and she was feeding the peacocks and chatting gaily away with an elderly Admiral with goggling fish-eyes. She rather liked him, and he her; she had a grasp of the calculus that he found rare enough in midshipmen, let alone pretty young ladies… That observation led him to reminiscences of midshipmen he’d known, and their scrapes, and that to a story about a missing midshipman and a bequest and a Bow Street Runner hired to track him down. It was the first Rey had heard of Bow Street Runners, and she quickly realized what she needed to do.

Before she ever came to Jakku House and the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls, Rey had spent an unknowable amount of time on the street. It was not a matter she cared to relate to Admiral Ackbar, however kind and concerned he might be; it was not a matter she even cared to discuss with Auntie Leia, who would surely want her to write a scathing indictment of the poor-laws if she knew. But the fact remained that Rey had been no older than five when she was abandoned, and there had been at least a year between that date and her induction into the Asylum.

In that time she had lived by what little wits she had, but more frequently she had lived by the kindness of a boy not much older than herself. He was infinitely luckier, being uncommonly strong for his age, and so being employed as a sort of boy-of-all-work in a chandler’s shop; but he had nowhere to sleep either, and thus they became friends of a sort, huddling together beneath steps to wait out summer storms, cooperating to steal an apple when they had nothing else to eat. He would comb out her hair with his fingers and arrange it into peculiar styles: plaits, twists, three knots down the back of her skull. She believed she would have died without his small kindnesses. Later, when she had found a berth at the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls, he would come to see her on a Sunday and bring a posy or a cheerful word.

He had been called Finn then, and she had some idea that he had come upon good luck around the same time she had, and been taken in by a family of means. She knew nothing of whom, however. What was more, he had never had a surname any more than she had, and she had not seen him since she was ten. Yet in Admiral Ackbar’s story, the Bow Street Runners had found a man living under a false name, presumed dead, in quite another country from the one where he had been lost. Surely they might be able to find Finn?

Rey was lucky once again in her guardian, for few of the scheming mamas of the _haut ton_ would have allowed their precious child to have so much as greeted a Bow Street Runner in passing. But Leia was made of sterner stuff, and was absolutely prepared to assist Rey in her quest.

The Runners took their time to work, and meanwhile Rey had much to do to prepare for the Season. She was not a connoisseur of fashions, had in fact never seen such an article as _La Belle Assemblée_ until Leia presented it to her, but was given to understand that she must be properly clothed for her come-out. Bebe, allowed to accompany them on excursions to the modiste and the milliner, was desperate to see Rey in emerald and sapphire and amethyst, but Leia overruled it. “You are very young,” she said, “and you are already more than a little outré through association with me—no, don’t make stupid faces like that about it, I know perfectly well that I’m not the thing! But it means you must be very proper if you wish to be welcomed, and that calls for sprig muslin, my girl.”

So Rey was outfitted in whites and ivories and the palest of pinks, and even Bebe had to admit that they suited her admirably: with pearls to set off the bronze sheen of her hair, and gloves so thin her finger-nails could be seen in outline, she was a vision of purity.

“Completely unexceptionable,” Countess Amilyn Holdo declared, when Lady Leia presented her with Miss Jakku one December day. “Where ever did you find her?”

“My brother’s ward,” Leia said. “He’d been keeping her under a bushel.”

Countess Holdo was a tall woman, thin as a reed or a whip, dressed in dove-grey satin with an infinitely high neck; Rey’s day-dress mirrored the Countess’s in color, though it was embellished with the black jet of mourning and had a somewhat less severe collar. She rather thought Leia had planned that, as a subtle compliment, for she had heard that the Countess was never seen in any other shade. Her good opinion was most important: without her sponsorship, Rey had no hope of gaining entrée to Almack’s and thus to the acceptance of the _haut ton._

“And you, girl,” the Countess asked, “how are you finding London?”

Rey knew she ought to say something about the shopping, or riding in the park; but she hadn’t enjoyed the shopping above half, and she had no horse to ride, so she said instead that it was a delightful place, she had made many good friends among Leia’s set, but she missed working on the steam engine at Ahch-To Hall.

“Funny,” the Countess said, “you didn’t seem like a bluestocking. Well, if you want to take, you’d better cease talk of steam engines, at least at first. I don’t know why, but the gentlemen dislike girls with a thought in their heads.”

“I dislike gentlemen without a thought in their heads, so perhaps I won’t take,” Rey said pertly, “but I don’t want vouchers for Almack’s for their sake. I want to meet other young ladies.”

Holdo and Leia exchanged a meaningful glance. “There are other ways to meet young ladies than to compete with them on the Marriage Mart,” the Countess said dubiously.

“Not that have been made known to me.”

“You have to admit that the old cats wouldn’t have their innocent kittens near me for anything,” Leia stepped in. “I tried to put together a skating-party for her with some of the daughters of our old set, and it was a sad try, I’ll tell you.”

The Countess nodded regally. “Well enough,” she said, “but if you take my advice, girl, you’ll think more about the men than the girls. You must marry _someone,_ you know, if you don’t want to end up an eccentric like Leia here.”

Marrying, Rey thought, was what had turned Leia into an eccentric; but she knew better than to disagree with a Patroness of Almack’s. The precious voucher was delivered the next day.

 

* * *

 

Even before Almack’s, Rey had some notion that she might be a success.

Leia took her to a party, a very small party she said, at the home of Mr. —, an up-and-coming man in the House of Commons. His wife was an up-and-coming political hostess as well, perhaps not such good _ton_ as all that, but certainly unobjectionable; and she had a daughter just Rey’s age.

The party was not small by Rey’s lights, consisting of no fewer than forty people she had never seen before. As for the daughter, Miss —, Rey decided she was a _female dog_ (though she knew better than to use the terms of her youth today). There was only one other young woman present, one Miss Rose Tico, and the hostess’ daughter bullied her mercilessly. After a span of some minutes, it occurred to Rey that this was because Miss Rose was more beautiful and had a larger dowry.

“Wouldn’t you like to have a glass of ratafia with me, Miss Rose?” Rey asked in desperation after the fifth or sixth barb. “I know that dear Miss — will like to speak with my dear guardian Lady Leia Solo, and here she is!”

Auntie Leia cast her a baleful stare as she and Rose quit the field. Rey could not quite feel guilty. Leia _must_ have known what the hostess’s daughter was like.

They breathed much easier in another room, with ratafia in their hands. “Thank you,” Miss Rose said. “I didn’t know how to get rid of her without being abominably rude.”

“Think nothing of it,” Rey said. “She was being unkind, and she had no reason to be. Now we can be perfectly easy.”

“Can you ever be perfectly easy at a party?” Rose asked, with admirable frankness. “I can’t. I’m not scared of it, exactly, but there’s all these people. And they’re looking at you.”

Rey glanced about her. People, yes: but they did not seem that different from the people Leia entertained, only a little less interesting, a little stuffier. “They’re looking at you, just as much,” she offered. “And why wouldn’t they be? You’re the prettiest girl in the room.”

“Oh no,” Rose said, “no one has ever accounted me a beauty,” but her olive cheeks grew pink with pleasure. She was not being modest; Rey was sure it was true that no one had complimented her looks, for she wasn’t the classic sort of ethereal maiden celebrated by portrait-painters. Yet her smile lit her open face in such an innocent, delightful way that Rey could not fathom that no one had noticed Rose’s loveliness, and she was about to say so when the first of Rey’s admirers appeared.

She recognized the lovestruck boy as a young poet who had made his bow to her at a lecture some weeks before; he was twenty years of age, down from Oxford, and desperate to please. He had composed a sonnet. Would she listen to it? She would.

It was execrable. Rose bit her lip to keep a straight face, and Rey found that she liked her even better—first for laughing at the bad verse, and then for trying to hide it to save the young swain’s feelings.

He was only the vanguard, however. Soon there were more: old Lord Amedda, all creaking corsets and old-fashioned chivalry; slim Mr. Cardinal, suave and unconvincing; Sir Villecham, clearly seeking to influence Lady Leia through her youthful friend. Rose watched, and sipped her ratafia, and smiled, and eventually danced with Rey’s rejected suitors.

“You must be flattered by all the attention,” Rose said, as the evening was coming to an end.

Rey did not know how to answer. “I imagine my money has something to do with it,” she said.

“But they’re telling the truth. You _are_ an English rose.”

“No, you are,” Rey responded reflexively.

“No, _you_ are,” Rose laughed, “and you’ll have to grow some thorns, given the number of bees swarming you,” and Rey knew she had made a friend for life.

 

* * *

 

In the end, the Runners did not find Finn at all. Rey herself did.

It seemed that Countess Holdo had been childhood friends with Auntie Leia, back when Leia was something less of a scandal and the only daughter of the Duke of Alderaan besides. When Leia had married Mr. Solo, the Countess could not bear to break the tie, though the others of her set were more than pleased to. In honor of her childhood friend, then, and having learned that Rey had not paid over ten formal visits in her life, the Countess took Rey along on her afternoon calls shortly after Christmas; and one of the calls was to Mrs. Phasma’s townhouse in Grosvenor Square.

Rey had been in town long enough to know something of Mrs. Phasma. She was a Patroness of Almack’s, like the Countess; she was a snob of the highest order, and had very likely argued against Rey’s receiving vouchers, though the Countess was mum in this regard; and she was known throughout town for her footmen, hired for their height alone and paid more for every inch.

It still seemed curious to Rey that anyone would be so vain as to hire servants or buy horseflesh simply for aesthetic considerations, so she was particularly attentive to the footmen in Mrs. Phasma’s house; and it was as they were being ushered into the parlor, where the lady herself sat swathed in an oxblood gown, that she realized that the hands holding the door for her seemed familiar. She paused, hovered, looked closely: the wrists were umber where they emerged from the white gloves, the body much broader and much, much taller than she had remembered, and yet it was Finn, his dear dark face strangely set beneath a powdered white wig.

“Finn!” she cried, and it was all she could do not to launch himself into his arms. “Finn, do you remember me? It’s Rey, little Rey! You stole apples for me…”

He did not speak. He gave a tiny shake of his head, and Rey remembered herself.

“I must apologize, Mrs. Phasma,” she said, turning and making her greeting to her hostess, “you see, when I was a child I was very poor, and I could hardly care for myself, and Finn here saved my life, and I have been looking for him everywhere, I even hired the Bow Street Runners…!”

“My young friend is rather ill,” Countess Holdo announced, putting an end to Rey’s explanations and drawing herself up to her not inconsiderable height in the face of Mrs. Phasma’s glowering countenance. “You will forgive us, Gwendoline, for imposing.”

Rey felt very small, and even perplexed. She knew she had not behaved as she ought, but usually when she behaved badly she _meant_ to. Surely one could be forgiven for an outburst when one had received a shock—and such a shock! She could not imagine how Finn had come to serve as a footman. For her part, the Countess thought it best to deposit Rey in the carriage and return to unruffle Mrs. Phasma’s feathers. With a sharp word to her coachman, Namit, she marched back inside, spine as straight as a ramrod.

Rey was not supposed to look out the windows when the coach was standing still, but she peeked out nevertheless, her eye on the imposing front door of the town house. So it was easy enough for Finn to find her some minutes later. He was no longer wearing his footman’s uniform, and for a moment she almost thought he was angry with her.

“I knew you’d come out!” she said to him, throwing open the coach’s door.

“You knew, did you?” Finn asked. His voice sounded strange to her, unrefined: she realized he’d had none of the elocution lessons Luke had pressed upon her. “What you were thinking I’ll never know, nor how you came to be here. You’re a lady!”

“I suppose I am,” she said. “I’m a lady now, and Finn, I mean to pay you back for every bit of trouble you’ve had over me—double or triple if I can!”

“Who’s this now?” came the coachman’s voice.

“My brother,” Rey told him blithely, ignoring his blatant disbelief. “Honestly, Namit, he is my brother, or the closest thing I have to it.”

“As you say, miss,” he said, “but I’ve orders from the Countess to keep you safe.”

“I’m safe as houses with Mr.— Mr.—”

“Storm,” Finn volunteered.

“Mr. Storm. You see?”

The coachman clearly did not see, but he was mollified somewhat when the Countess emerged from Mrs. Phasma’s house, looked Finn up and down, and told him that he might as well come with them.

Finn’s story, it emerged, was simple. When Rey had been taken from Jakku House, the proprietress had refused to tell him where she had gone. Without any way to trace her,  he had put his mind to bettering himself, and as he was strong and able, found himself a position as a stableboy rather than a general slavey, stableboys having better opportunity for advancement. When he grew into his height his mistress had realized he was better used as a footman, and so he had remained until the year previous, when Mrs. Phasma had stolen him away from his previous employer.

When he learned that Rey had been looking for him for months, he was surprised; when he heard the tale of her life after the orphanage, he was amazed; and when he learned that her intention was to buy him a commission and establish him in a comfortable life, he was thunderstruck.

“I don’t believe you can just _do_ that,” he declared.

“I can and I will,” said Rey, mulishly.

“It must cost—”

“Barely a fraction of my allowance! Oh, I can’t touch the principal until I marry, but what does it matter? I have enough to live on for ever without it!”

It seemed they were set to quarrel back and forth about the matter forever, but the coach pulled to a stop before Lady Leia’s home. The Countess held out a hand to bar them from exiting.

“Now,” she said, “Mr. Storm. May I give you a word of advice?”

It was hardly a question, and Finn, who had only days ago waited upon the Countess at a dinner in Mrs. Phasma’s grand hall, could hardly deny her.

“You are a fortunate young man. Doubly fortunate, that Miss Jakku seems utterly careless of propriety and prepared to do anything to improve your lot.”

He gulped and nodded.

“Such an opportunity is unlikely to come your way again, for if you should refuse it, you will certainly never be permitted to see Miss Jakku again. A Captaincy in the cavalry will enable you to enter polite circles, to squire her around parties or drive her in the Park; a footman’s berth, never.”

She nodded definitively, and opened the door, and let herself out, heedless of her servants’ attempts to help.

Rey and Finn looked at each other. Slowly, Finn began to smile.

“Captain Storm, huh?” he said.

“A dashing military man you’ll make, too!” Rey grinned.

 

* * *

 

Rey’s early life, and her rustic upbringing at Ahch-To Hall, had hardly taught her the nuances of polite society. It had taught her something better: to see herself as a person of merit; to trust her instincts, and to follow them; to care more for her own happiness and that of her friends than the expectations of others. She had run wild, and exercised her not-inconsiderable mind on steam engines and the hall’s indifferent drains and the canal and the irrigation of Luke’s tenant’s fields; she had learned to dance because it seemed enjoyable, and learned to ride because it was necessary, and learned to drive a coach pell-mell down country roads for the sheer joy of feeling the wind in her hair. With such talents, and her money, and her beauty, she needed only to pay attention to her manners to make a complete success—and she intended to.

Finn was a somewhat harder case. He had spent years in the lap of fashionable London; but where Rey had been trained to independence of thought and led to expect a certain level of respectful treatment, Finn had been molded into the form of a servant, and had never observed the Quality with the thought that he might someday take his place among them. He could be seen absently reaching up to adjust a periwig that was no longer there; he could never be comfortable relaxing in a chair, always looking over his shoulder for a nonexistent mistress who might chide his laziness; and as for privacy—when he entered the room that Rey’s money had secured for him, the room at the genteel boarding-house where he was permitted a key, the room where he shared space with no one, he felt simultaneously thrilled and frightened. The world was a much bigger place, suddenly, and he had not yet grown to match it.

But people have a way of rising to their circumstances: on the first day of his new life he was at the tailor’s, on the second at the cobbler’s, and on the third in Lady Leia’s drawing room learning to dance a quadrille. Rey had a great passion for tools, and knew that one must chuse them to fit a problem: when presented with an awkward urchin-turned-footman-turned-man-about-town, a finely cut coat would do more good than a thousand wrenches, and confidence on a ballroom floor would do the rest.

So they danced up and down an imaginary set, laughing at Finn’s clumsiness and Rey’s inability to explain what to do, as the butler Mr. Threepio plunked out reels on a badly out-of-tune harpsichord (“For I haven’t played it since I was a girl myself,” Leia had said, “and required to be accomplished. Young ladies’ accomplishments! Give me a girl who reads!”). For a moment Rey wondered if Finn were not the solution to her problems: they might marry, and thus she would become a matron and be allowed to put off insipid sprig muslin and do as she pleased. The few misses she had met might cut her, with the exception of Rose Tico—Rose was surely kinder than the rest—but she would fall back on her friends in Lady Leia’s set, and if they were older than herself, why, that was all the better.

The feel of Finn’s warm hand on hers as they moved through the figures, though, didn’t thrill her. He _was_ the closest thing she would ever have to a brother, just as she’d told Namit on that day outside Mrs. Phasma’s house. And one couldn’t marry one’s brother.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said as they jigged about.

“You’ll pay me with my own money?” she responded automatically.

“No, mine. I had my footman’s pay before, and I have a pound of it left, so there’s plenty of pennies for you,” he said.

Realizing suddenly that he might not wish to be reminded that he hung on her sleeve, she searched his face for hurt. There was none. Finn was the best person she knew; he might have grown timid through years in Mrs. Phasma’s service, and he might be unused to society, but he had an inherent sweetness she could only aspire to.

“I was thinking of marriage,” she said, because there should be no secrets between them, “and how people will say that I am hanging out for a husband.”

“Are you?”

“No—I don’t think so. I have quite enough money to never need one.”

He merely looked at her, but his gaze seemed to say, Then why bother with all the dancing and dresses and curtseying and so on?

“Well,” she amended, “perhaps I would not mind seeing what there is to see of the world. But I have no fixed intention of marrying.”

“Every young lady marries,” Finn said, bowing over her hand—in bowing, at least, he had the poise of a gentleman to the manner born.

“Except the poor, the ill-favored, and the soiled doves,” Rey said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK one last thing. I have not picked a specific year in which this story takes place; it's more a pastiche of Regency tropes than a work of historical fiction. If there's a real clunker, please let me know, though; I don't want to be too ahistorical. The one exception: I am aware that adoptions weren't a thing in the Regency era and that Dukedoms don't pass through daughters and that therefore Kylo should not be a Duke but you know what, this is a silly Star Wars AU and we are all gonna just live with it!


	3. Chapter 3

Ren knew perfectly well why he came to Almack’s, and yet that did not make it a whit less stultifying.

To begin with, the doors were shut at eleven o’clock exactly, so one couldn’t linger at any earlier entertainments. The rooms were kept hot and stuffy, the dancing at least three years behind-the-times, the cards nonexistent, the food poor, and no hard drink was permitted—Ren was no tippler, but it might have helped to while away the time. As for the company, the Patronesses were well enough, and the girls irrefutably virtuous: just the thing to find a future Duchess of Alderaan. If only their tender mamas weren’t a hairsbreadth behind, trading  _ on-dits _ and whispering about the ancientness of Ren’s name and the meagerness of his fortune… 

Lady Snoke would not like to hear him speak like this. 

It was a good thing, then, that she was not a mind-reader. And she was not even present: she rarely missed an evening at Almack’s, but if she planned to attend tonight, she planned to arrive barely in the nick of time.

He cast a jaundiced eye over the gathered belles. There was Miss Rose Tico: middling family, middling fortune, but no address at all, and with the stink of her sister's failures upon her. Miss Connix: pretty but rather fast; indeed, he was surprised to see she still had vouchers after her capers in the Park last weekend. He would speak to the Patronesses about it. Lady Carise Sindian: she had been reckoned a diamond of the first water, at least until the appearance of the Incomparable. 

The Incomparable: that was what they were calling Miss Jakku. Her insouciance seemed, to others, becoming; her lack of relations charming, for meddling in-laws were a man’s curse; her face and figure the most pleasing that had graced the ballrooms of London in a dog’s age; and her fortune, of course, the greatest plum.

“I hear La Jakku makes her debut at Almack’s tonight,” Lord Hux said, as though he had read Ren’s mind, ensuring that he spoke loudly enough for the gathered girls to hear. “See them scramble to fill their dance cards before they can’t get a man’s attention!”

“Quiet, Hux,” Ren snapped. “Or don’t you intend to marry? You’ll frighten them away.”

“From this crop? Hardly,” he sniffed. “I’ve no need to give up my little toys yet.”

Hux’s  _ little toys _ were opera-dancers, a matched pair, and very devoted to him, or to his pocketbook at any rate. Ren did not himself indulge in such pastimes, though they were natural enough, he supposed. “Save that for Boodle’s,” he said. “There are tender ears present.”

“Not the ears of the Incomparable. I’ll lay a monkey on it that she’s well up to snuff,” Hux declared. “I know you’re convinced she’s a virgin, but damme if she doesn’t know all about bits of muslin. You have to, where she comes from.”

Ren refrained from telling Hux that she had used that very cant expression to him the first time they had met. It would only have led to uncomfortable explanations of how and why he had first met the Incomparable, further discussions of her virtue or lack thereof, and likely a tiresome falling-out, followed by an even more tiresome reconciliation. He had no need to waste breath on the chit. “If you don’t intend to marry this year,” he said, “why have you come to Almack’s so often?”

“I didn’t know I wasn’t going to marry until I saw the offerings,” Hux said. “Rather weak sauce, the lot of them.”

“Except Miss Jakku,” Ren said, for she had appeared.

As always, she was attired on just the proper side of correctness and at the height of fashion: a gown the blue of a pale winter sky, her gloves dyed to match, with the luminous pearls that had already become her trademark studding her silken hair. It was in the most remarkable style, three knots down the back of her head, drawing the eye to the fine knobs of her spine and the smooth sweep of her swanlike neck. She would start a new fashion, Ren thought, if she wore it like that again. He considered whether she had already filled her dance card.

“She’s not much,” Hux said. “I prefer blondes.” 

The opera-dancers were blondes, and Ren had opened his mouth to tease Hux about them further when he felt the hair on his arms stand up: someone had snuck up on them. 

It was Mrs. Phasma, the youngest Patroness of Almack’s, tall as a tall man and resplendent in red and silver. Rubies like drops of blood dripped from her ears and neck, and her hair was a white-blonde cloud. “Very good,” she said. “Then you will hardly mind leading me out to begin the dancing.”

“I believe it’s not your office to ask,” Hux began, puffing himself up, but Phasma cut him down with a glare.

“I believe you have little to say if you would like to continue to haunt this ballroom,” she said. “You seem no more likely to come up to scratch than last year, after all, and we must ensure there are enough eligible and willing gentlemen for the debutantes to try for.”

Hux meekly scribbled his name on her dance-card. It wouldn’t do to be thrown out of Almack’s, even if it meant dancing with the tallest woman in London.

 

* * *

 

“Go get ‘em,” Countess Holdo whispered in her ear, “and never mind these queans.”

Rey was grateful for the encouragement. She had felt her spirits quail at the entrance to Almack’s, that  _ sanctum sanctorum _ from which Lady Leia was still banned as bad  _ ton. _ Her companion, Mrs. Mothma, was kind to have agreed to take her about—indeed, as Countess Holdo was a Patroness and the rest of Lady Leia’s connections too scandalous for Almack’s, Rey could hardly have attended without Mrs. Mothma to lend her countenance. Stiill, Mrs. Mothma did not know her well enough to see her anxiety, nor to know what to do about it if she had seen.

Mrs. Phasma and Lady Snoke, the other Patronesses, had been coldly civil when they came to pay their respects, and until Countess Holdo’s kind words, Rey had begun to think she would not take. 

But that was foolish. Almack’s could hardly be worse than the streets, Rey reminded herself, and anyway she was not here to find a mate, only to enjoy herself and gain a wider circle of friends. What was more, she was well on the way to accomplishing that goal: she had paid her required compliments to the Patronesses and now was free to socialize with whom she wished. Rose Tico waved at her from across the floor, where she stood in a knot of girls in pale dresses. Rey relinquished Mrs. Mothma’s arm with a firm pat, releasing her to greet the other dowagers.

She was half-way to Rose when His Grace of Alderaan swept in and commanded her attention.

It was not that he had changed since she last saw him, at Ahch-To Hall; if anything, it was that he had  _ not _ changed. Either he had not put off mourning yet, in which case he ought not to be at Almack’s, or he habitually wore unrelieved black. The same black hair waved back from the same ivory brow, and he looked down the same overlarge Roman nose with the same expression of distaste.

“Miss Jakku,” he said, very correctly, with a gentlemanly bow.

“Duke,” she said, struggling to keep her voice cool. She knew he was only six feet two; Rose had told her that his valet had told her father’s valet so; but he seemed much taller when he stood looming over one.

“May I solicit the honor of your hand for the first dance?”

She blinked. “No.”

He reacted as though she had slapped him. But what  _ could _ he have expected? The last time she had spoken with him, he had all but called her a whore—and then he had thrown her out of the only home she had ever known!

“No?” he repeated.

“No,” she said.

“May I know the reason?”

She was about to open her mouth and say No, you may not. Or, worse, she was about to open her mouth and say Yes, it’s because you are a horse’s ass and I would not stand up with you if you were the last man in the world. Or, perhaps, she was about to open her mouth and say that she was tired, or uninterested in dancing, or some other such polite fiction. But she never found out what she would have said, because a smooth masculine voice said, “I’m afraid I’ve stolen a march on you, Your Grace. Miss Jakku is promised to me for the first two.”

It was a man she had never seen before in her life—a very handsome man in a naval lieutenant’s uniform. He bowed ceremoniously to His Grace, who had no choice but to bow back and, flustered, absent himself from the proceedings.

“I had better make good on my word,” the stranger said, “or are you truly promised to someone else, and I’ve stepped in it?”

“You haven’t stepped in it,” Rey reassured him. “I’m very grateful to you, Lieutenant…?”

“Dameron,” he answered. “I’m only an Honorable, no Lordly life for me, I fear.  Lord lumme, if you aren’t every bit as Incomparable as they say!”

Rey hit him with her fan, but it was a very perfunctory tap. “And you are quite extremely out of line, to introduce yourself in such a way.”

“Ah, but I’m in the way of an old family friend. Hasn’t Auntie Leia mentioned me?” At Rey’s shake-of-the-head, he pulled a woeful face. “How quickly we forget! She loves to take protegées, you see. I was her last, until I got my ship. Then we capture a sweet little frigate, I’m sent back with the prize—though Admiral Sloane won’t let me ship my swab, and you wait, I’ll see nothing but my share of the prize-money and that reduced to nothing by the swindlers at the shipyards—so lo and behold, you find me here, at Almack’s, eating cardboard sandwiches and seeking only to meet the famous, the beauteous Miss Rey Jakku.”

“What a flirt you are!”

“My stock-in-trade, as with all younger sons, you most know.”

Lieutenant Dameron  _ was _ a flirt, and one without too finely-tuned a sense of propriety, Rey realized, but he was familiar with even the dirtiest gossip, and to her pleasure they shared many acquaintances in common. Admiral Ackbar was his particular patron, and as for Finn Storm, why, they had become fast friends already! They were staying in the same lodging-house in — Street, and had torn a pheasant together just this morning. “And, for the Army, he is the finest officer I’ve ever seen,” Dameron assured her, as he led her capering down the set. “Why, he’s picked up on every trick, and you’d never know he’d not been born to be a gentleman; gave me hell-for-leather down Rotten Row the other day and always pays his debts. If he sees combat, he’ll be a hero for certain.”

Rey was not at all sure that she wanted her oldest friend to see combat; that was not why she had bought him the commission. But it was true enough that Finn was an excellent rider, having learned about horses when he was a stableboy, so Lieutenant Dameron was unlikely to be  _ purely _ flattering her. And it was better, she supposed, that he be thought a likely hero than a likely coward.

At the end of the first two, Rey allowed Lieutenant Dameron to escort her not back to Countess Holdo (ensconced on a bench and clearly in the midst of a comfortable chat with a lady of advanced age) but to Rose, who had lacked a partner. He kindly put his name to Rose’s card, noticing that she had been a wallflower, and announced his intention to bring them something refreshing, if they thought the Dark Duke would leave them be.

“I don’t believe you ought to call him that,” Rey scolded, feeling that Lieutenant Dameron might be her downfall. “There are so many things one simply doesn’t say, and I’m certain that unflattering nick-names for peers are in this category.”

“If you mean the Duke of Alderaan—if the shoe fits, wear it,” Rose said.

“ _ Is _ he not out of mourning even still?” Rey asked. 

“He was never in it,” Rose told her, “or anyway if he was one couldn’t tell, for he has always worn black, even when Paige and I were schoolroom misses and would sneak down to peek at the people at Mama’s parties.”  

“Is Paige your sister?”

“She was,” Rose said, in a tone of finality.

The conversation was prevented from taking a serious turn by the appearance of Mr. Cardinal, requesting the honor of Rey’s hand for the next set, and Rose’s for the one following, it being impossible to stand before two young ladies and single one of them out. Others followed, and tolerably soon Rey’s dance card was full, though she was obliged to sit out the waltz, not having been approved for it. Then Lieutenant Dameron returned and filled their heads with gossip and nonsense; Rose presented both of them to Miss Connix, who seemed pleased to add a dashing Lieutenant to her list of dancing-partners; and then the orchestra struck up again and they were whirled into the next set.

It was rather later in the night when the dance brought Rey and Lord Alderaan together again. She had been unable to find Lord LeHuse until the dancing had nearly begun, and so they were obliged to make up a quadrille with whoever was equally tardy: Alderaan, dancing with Lady Carise Sindian.

Alderaan was an excellent dancer, Rey had to admit, although perhaps it was simply by comparison to Lord LeHuse, who danced lazily and with sloppy motions. At least he did not ruin the figures—but she could not help but look with slight envy on Lady Carise, whose partner’s skill amplified her own talents. Lady Carise was obviously aware of her luck: not only did she emit the general aura of a cat in cream, she was engaged in a pitched battle for Alderaan’s affections, batting her eyes and staring adoringly up at him.

It was not until that evening, having a tête-à-tête with Auntie Leia in her dressing-room and petting Gary the dog, that it occurred to Rey that Alderaan was the target of many a marriageable girl. She said so, and Leia brayed with laughter.

“Silly girl! He’s the prize of the marriage-mart! I’ll wager that every one of the old biddies I grew up with are scheming to leg-shackle their daughter to him.”

“But he hasn’t any money,” Rey objected.

“Coronets are worth more than crowns,” Leia told her. “In any case, he may not be beautiful, but he has a good figure and a good address, when he wants to. Lady Carise wouldn’t be the first to fancy herself in love with him and his romantic air.”

“They all came to nothing?”

A cloud passed over Leia’s face. “Yes,” she said. “Some to nothing, and some to less than nothing.”

“He never ruined them!”

“Not precisely, or else even Lady Snoke would have to censor him. No, he raises false hopes, then lets them down; or he lures them into fast behavior, then fails to speak up when society convicts them. He kills a reputation by degrees, not in a single stroke, and no blame ever seems to attach to him. It was always the lady’s fault.”

A crease appeared on Rey’s pale brow. Gary glanced up at her with a plaintive stare, and she resumed scratching his ears until he made little grunts of pleasure.

“He was a dear little boy,” Leia said. “He is still a dear little boy—or so I tell myself. It is a mother’s prerogative to think her son better than he is.”

Leia seemed so sad that Rey replied, “I’m sure he has many good qualities.” But she could not think what they could possibly be.

 

* * *

 

As the winter properly turned to spring, it began to dawn on Rey that Countess Holdo’s doubts about the London Season as a venue for forming friendships with other young ladies were not altogether phantastical. Certainly there were many young ladies to  _ meet _ , so many that Rey could not keep their names straight. In an idle moment Rey counted the cards she had received, and realized that her acquaintance now included more than three times as many families as had visited at Ahch-To Hall.

The problem was that these ladies fell, largely, into two camps: the shrinking violet (prone to gasping “but Miss Jakku—you actually  _ spoke _ with Lord Alderaan—I would  _ die _ !” or, worse, becoming mute in the presence of anyone besides their mamas) and the crusading heroine (prone to viewing Rey as the Competition and therefore to be held at arms’ length). At dinner-parties Rey found herself speaking solely to young men, particularly the dourer sort, who could often be drawn out through a few observations on the power of steam, and the changes it would surely bring to the English countryside in a very few years. It seemed that Countess Holdo had been wrong about the gentlemen preferring girls without a thought in their head, for then she found that she was obliged to dance with these young men, and that they sent her posies and called upon her, which was very pleasant until she learned that the myrtle twined around the bouquets meant  _ marriage _ .

Unfortunately Lady Leia found the entire scenario a source of great amusement, and refused to depress the gentlemen’s pretensions, for, she pointed out, she was of no legal relationship to Rey at all, and so she had no right to meddle in her affairs. “I am asking, no, beseeching you to meddle!” Rey cried, to which Leia said “my dear, you have made yourself charming; now you must make yourself un-charming.”

“But making myself un-charming will only reduce the number of invitations I receive,” Rey complained to Rose, “and will endear me to no one. Does everyone in London have more hair than wit? No one in the north would behave half so shabbily!”

Rose considered this, and then said, slowly, as though trying not to give offense, “Ye-e-s. But in the north you were a known quantity; and I dare say the young men paid rather less attention to you.”

Rey admitted it was true; but she could not understand why, when she had said a million times that she did not wish to marry and certainly not this year, no one could take her at her word.

“It seems strange to them,” Rose said. “It seems strange to me, for that matter, although I suppose if I had your fortune it might be a different case. Do you never dream of children? Of a house of your own?”

“It seems to me that children come whether or not one is married,” Rey said.

Rose gasped. “I hardly know what you mean!” But Rey looked long and hard at her, and she was forced to admit, “well, I do know what you mean—but you mustn’t say it.”

“I know. But it is utterly stoopid how we all must express ourselves in these milquetoast ways.”

“You sound like Lady Leia!”

“Hardly—for Auntie Leia would say that I  _ ought _ to say what I mean, and damn society.”

“She would not say ‘damn’!” Rose’s voice had a defiant tone on the last word, as though she were amazed that her lips could form the syllables.

“She would,” Rey held, a smile beginning to creep over her face, “and much more besides. Don’t you know she’s a radical?”

“Mama says so—but I thought radicals were persons with bombs who blew up the Houses of Parliament.”

Rey had sometimes wondered whether Lady Leia might not know how to make a bomb; she seemed to know everything else. But that was not something she ought to say to Rose. “I still don’t understand other girls, or why you and I are so different, and I wish I did.”

“It seems simple to me,” Rose said. “You have always assumed you would make your own way in the world, and so you still do, for all you have put on the clothes of a lady of fashion. If you lost your money tomorrow, you would pick yourself up and go to work and thank the Lord that you had not lost anything more important. But the rest of us were not raised to that; we know that we must find a protector to care for us, and our whole selves are bent on it, from the time we leave the schoolroom till the day we are married.”

“Not you!” Rey protested.

“Yes, me,” Rose said, “I must be married this year, for my parents can’t afford another Season for me, and I don’t want to marry anyone at home in —shire. The fact is that I would hate you too, if you had not saved me from Miss — at that awful party,” and they laughed until Rose’s mama came to see what the great fuss was about.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Finn took Rey out in her curricle in Hyde Park. It was odd to not hold the ribands herself; driving had been one of her chief pleasures at Ahch-To Hall, and nearly her first purchase upon inheriting Lord Skywalker’s money had been the fine little vehicle upon which she was now seated; but Finn required practice, and she was not so self-conscious as to refuse to be seen being driven by a less-than-excellent whip.

Fortunately their initial lessons, conducted far from the fashionable hour, had been a success, and Finn was acquitting himself very well. Driving in the Park was pleasant not only for the atmosphere but also for the company. It was a chance to see the fashions one might not encounter in a ballroom, and a chance to say hello to those one knew. Indeed, Finn was rather more familiar with the gathered lights of society than Rey, and more than once (after pulling away from another carriage, having made polite small-talk) he explained to Rey who precisely they had been speaking to, their family situation, and their general reputation-around-town.

Watching the great procession, gigs and curricles and phaetons and landaus all making their stately way around the park, drawn by cattle of every description and quality, Rey marveled at how different it all was to the country: she saw more people in one glance here than in all the years she had lived at Ahch-To Hall. The park was beautiful, but hardly wild: the Serpentine, still icy though it was mid-spring, was little more than a puddle to her eyes after living so many years by the sea. Yet every person in London seemed to believe the Metropolis the be-all and end-all of their ambitions—even Auntie Leia, who otherwise was so sensible!

Was this homesickness? And if it were, should she consider retiring to the country—hiring a companion and a house and living a quiet life somewhere? Not somewhere  _ quite _ as far away as Ahch-To Hall, perhaps. It would be too hard to never see Auntie Leia or the old Admiral or the rest of their set again, and they were firmly fixed in the city. But that was no obstacle; she had the means, now, to live where she liked, and not where the world fixed her, and if she gave up all idea of being Respectable…

“...oh yes, I should very much like to speak to Lieutenant Dameron!” Finn had adopted a funny high voice, and was doing his best to ape Rey’s carefully practiced accent. He must have been speaking with her, and receiving no response, decided to fill in her half of the conversation.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said, “I was wool-gathering.”

“You’ve enough to make twenty pair of stockings by now,” Finn said, good-humored as ever. “Look and see whose path we’re about to cross!”

Rey did, and to her delight, realized that Miss Rose Tico was driving in the park with Lieutenant Dameron. She could not help but notice that their chaise was a sluggish thing, with horseflesh to match, though very well maintained; she wondered at it, for Rose had betrayed her knowledge of cattle and carriages through several chance remarks at Almack’s, and Rey had thought her to be a connoisseur. But then, she reflected, Miss Rose did not control her own fortune: perhaps her honored parents were less perceptive than she in such matters. Or perhaps the carriage belonged to Lieutenant Dameron—he seemed an out-and-outer, but he was very down at heel just at the moment.

“Halloo the shore!” Dameron chorused.

“Halloo the boat!” Finn replied, evidently a private joke. “And who is your lovely passenger? Do you carry her to the West Indies and beyond?”

“Not even so far as Rotten Row,” Dameron said. “May I present to you Miss Rose Tico; Miss Rose, Captain Finn Storm; and you already know Miss Rey Jakku…”

The conversation could not be lengthy; the procession had to continue, carriages filing past one another in their pace. But it did not need to be, for Rey had seen the expression on Rose’s face when she beheld Finn: pure admiration. Finn had betrayed less, but as they drove back to Lady Leia’s home he had remarked that Lieutenant Dameron was a “lucky dog” to drive out with as sweet a girl as Miss Rose. Many a marriage, Rey thought, had been made on less affection, and after all, though  _ Rey  _ was not on the Marriage Mart,  _ Rose _ had the explicit goal of becoming riveted to some gentleman or another…and was Finn not now a gentleman?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are not familiar with a quadrille, here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSD37PF2_Dw
> 
> As always, come chat to me on Twitter - @fernybranca!


	4. Chapter 4

It was not many days later when Rey had cause to consider whether marriage was, in fact, a blesséd state, suitable to her nearest and dearest, or whether perhaps it had been somewhat oversold.

She was walking in the park with Gary. Though the dog’s pace was hardly speedy, and Rey’s delicate shoes did not permit her the same energetic stride as she had used to practice in the country, Bebe and Lady Leia’s tallest footman still dawdled far behind their charge, surely flirting away. This was not a circumstance that bothered Rey in the least: she was pleased to pretend that she walked alone, as she had used to do, and to take the time to turn over in her mind the events of the previous night.

The carousel of social events had whirled around to land on Lady Carise Sindian’s parents: they had thrown the doors of their home open to a crush of ladies and gentlemen, and Rey had been among them. Her hostess was polite, if distant; Rey sensed jealousy in her behavior, and wished she could exclaim “but I am  _ not _ your daughter’s rival, I have no designs on  _ any _ eligible gentleman!”

The night would have been unmemorable, another whirl of dancing and chatting and feet growing tired from standing, except that Lord Sindian had unbent sufficiently to permit Lady Leia Solo to darken his door.

When the invitation was delivered, explicitly addressed to Miss Rey Jakku and her companion, Leia had demurred. “What do you want me for?” she had asked. “I’ve nothing to do with the biddies—I’d only shame you.”

“But you know that matters not at all,” Rey wheedled. “I have established myself at Almack’s: now that I am received there, what harm can you do? I have no expectations for marriage, so you can hardly claim you’ll scare away my suitors.” And eventually Leia had agreed to come.

The evening was a delight, despite Lady Sindian’s frosty demeanor. Rey had known that Auntie Leia came from this world, that she had been a duke’s daughter, but she had never seen Leia operate in it. Leia was a master. All eyes turned to her and Rey upon their announcement. As usual, Rey’s swains flocked to her side. But moments later, having dismissed the worst of her court, Rey looked around to find her chaperone—and discovered that a court nearly as large had formed around  _ her,  _ male and female alike, old friends and new gawkers, curious to see what had happened to the former Lady Leia Organa in the thirty years she had recused herself from society.

The next morning Rey was unsurprised to find Auntie Leia exhausted, having danced twice as much as a matron strictly ought, and having talked all night with former friends. She did not refine too much upon their attentions; in the carriage on their way home, she had pointed out that if they were truly her friends they would have stood by her these many years; yet the reunion had obviously been enjoyable.

So Leia slept late, and Rey took Gary with her to walk in the park, and Bebe and the footman flirted their way along behind as they circumnavigated the Serpentine. She laughed when Gary tried, in his lumbering way, to chase the ducks and geese that nested on its banks; he would pace after them, disappointed when they fled him, and then turn back to her as if to say  _ why don’t they wish to make my acquaintance? _

“You’ll never make friends with a bird,” she scolded him, “better to find some other dogs. Look, there’s Mrs. Krennic with her spaniels!” She pointed, but Gary did not seem to understand pointing, panting up at her with stupid devotion.

“He’s never been much of a dog for dogs, if you take my meaning,” someone said.

It was an older man, his face craggy and worn. No one could mistake him for a man of fashion: he wore brown tweeds better-suited to hunting in the country than walking in Town, even in Hyde Park, and his boots were poorly blacked. But there was a sparkle in his eye that Rey imagined, in his youth, would have endeared him to any lady: he was a proper rogue, if an aging one.

“You have the advantage of me, sir, though evidently not of Gary,” she said, for upon hearing his voice Gary had turned as quickly as she had ever seen him and galumphed to greet him, the man kneeling to permit the dog to wash his face with kisses.

“Ah! I don’t suppose she’s said much about me,” he muttered elliptically.

“ _ She  _ being, I presume, Lady Leia Solo?”

“Leia. My wife—or my wife once, anyhow. I suppose there’s no way for her to have divorced me without my knowing?” He smiled, lopsidedly and ruefully, and it did not reach his eyes.

Rey hardly knew; she had never known a divorcée, had scarcely thought of the possibility. “I believe she considers herself your wife,” she said carefully. “But you are quite right: she does not speak of you often.” 

“Is she well?”

Rey considered him, and whether she ought to be speaking with him at all. Mr. Solo! She had assumed he was dead, but no one had outright said so. A glance behind her showed that Bebe and the footman were exchanging kisses, half-hidden by a tree—she really ought to put a stop to it, but it was convenient to be unsupervised just now. “Yes,” she finally said, “as you would know if you came to see her. Where do you live? How do you get by?”

“Oh, I make ends meet,” he said. “Before I met her I was a smuggler, you know.”

Rey had not. Auntie Leia had described him as a merchant, very colorless and dry.

“There’s always money to be made when a war’s on,” he informed her. “I’ve a sweet ship, the  _ Falcon,  _ and a good first mate, and the oceans are our demesne. Freedom! You can’t have much of it here in London.”

“I don’t,” Rey said, feeling that she ought to be frank with him, “but then, that’s my choice.”

“Leia’s too, I suppose,” Mr. Solo said, and his face set in a moue of distaste that seemed somehow familiar. “Well, you tell her I say hello.”

“Tell her yourself,” Rey said.

“No. She won’t want to see me. You can’t know.” And with a half-shrug, he spun on his heel and walked away, leaving Rey far more puzzled than before.

Was it truly Auntie Leia’s husband? What had happened between them? Why had Leia let her think for so long that he was dead? Or was this an impostor—a former servant, someone who had walked Gary before Rey had come to stay, someone who now was trying to wheedle his way into her good graces with a nefarious plot in mind?

No, that last was impossible. Not because it would beggar the imagination of a novelist, though it would: no, it was impossible because Rey knew where she had seen that moue of distaste before, had seen that half-shrug. Lord Alderaan’s gestures were just the same as his father’s. 

 

* * *

 

Rey resolved not to ask Auntie Leia about Mr. Solo, as she obviously had no desire to discuss her erstwhile husband. She found it was not so easy, however, to escape his progeny. 

In the following days Alderaan seemed to be everywhere, and always poised to give her an exquisite set-down. His constant attendance at Almack’s could be explained by the attentions he danced on Lady Carise Sindian—and she was welcome to him, Rey thought!—and, of course, who did not promenade at the fashionable hour? But there was no reason for him to hover outside of Gunter’s just as she and Lady Rose took their seats in the window. There was even less sense in the fact that, at Tattersall’s, he pushed the bidding on a lady’s riding-horse higher and higher still, till Finn conceded and returned to Rey with apologies for not obtaining the pretty blue roan she’d dreamed of. It was no secret that Finn was Rey’s agent in such matters, but she knew well enough Alderaan had no money: why, then, would he let himself be drawn into such heavy bidding? And what use might he have for a lady’s horse? As a gift to Lady Carise, she supposed, though a very improper gift it would be until after the banns were read.

For his part, Ren found Miss Jakku nearly as vexing. It was beyond enough that she enjoyed the use of money that ought to have been his, even if she were to marry a cit and slink off to wealthy obscurity. But no: she had to come to Town, move in with his mother, and proceed to charm the lot of them. With any luck, he thought viciously, she would fall in with the Carlton House set and become Prinny’s favorite—such a mushroom would never turn him down, even if it were her ruin! And she was in such looks, whenever he saw her, that the Prince Regent would surely snap her up, were he only given the chance.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Rey would not be presented at court: Lady Leia disdained the monarchy utterly, a political position that Ren had tolerated in his younger years but could not countenance today. Perhaps, he reflected, he ought to go to court to avoid her, because she was certainly everywhere else he went. Even at White’s the conversation inevitably eventually turned to the Incomparable, and who would win her pretty face and her piles of money.

“No one,” he snapped, eventually, after one too many brandies and losing one too many hands of cards. “She’ll be tied down by no one—you mark my words. She’ll end an old maid, or I’ll—I’ll—”

But what he would do, neither he nor anyone else ever found out, because good old Hux sat him down and poured another glass of brandy into him. He subsided, without even breaking a glass this time; but certain gentlemen, who had ventured a flutter on precisely when the Dark Duke would offer for Lady Carise, quietly changed their bets to reflect another potential bride.

It was perhaps understandable, then, that Armitage Hux was at pains to remind his dearest friend of exactly how disreputable Miss Jakku was, when they observed her and her bosom-bow Miss Rose Tico at a bookseller’s in Bond Street. “Do you suppose she is literate?” he drawled, summoning Ren’s attention from a volume on canals—a topic Ren seemed to be swotting up on, though Hux could hardly see why. “She hardly seems comfortable here. —Ah! Here comes the footman Storm!” For a dark man had entered the shop, and made his way directly to the girls: Rey’s maid looked discreetly aside as he greeted them. “Do you suppose he’s dangling after her? They’re well-matched, I suppose, but it is simply too much to imagine your poor uncle’s fortune wasted on a person like that…”

Ren feigned disinterest, but Hux could see the tension in the way he slowly raised his eyes from the book. “Hardly,” he said. “Miss Rose Tico is his object.”

“Do you think?” Hux leaned against the bookshelf. “They can hardly have met—she goes nowhere without her duenna, and he has no vouchers to Almack’s, nor entrée at the best houses….” 

But so it was. It wasn’t their first meeting, Ren thought: Rey took herself away to a corner, glancing through a secondhand edition of  _ The Corsair _ , as Captain Storm and Miss Rose billed and cooed like lovebirds, obviously believing themselves unobserved. 

“Disgusting,” Hux declared.

“Indeed.”

“Her parents ought to be told.”

“Do you think it your duty?” Though he knew quite well how the game was played, Ren had never fully been capable of conforming himself to Hux’s sly ways: he would rather attack things head-on.

“Duty? Perhaps. Pleasure? Certainly. Who does not take pleasure in preventing a mésalliance? That family has suffered enough, hasn't it? But perhaps Lady Snoke will advise us on just what we ought to do?”

It was a jab at Ren, whose devotion to the matron was a source of some humor among his cohort, but Ren would not rise to the bait. Lady Snoke had taken him in, had rehabilitated his image, had ensured his reception in society when his own mother had sought only to drag him down with her into ruin: if he was overly devoted, then so be it. “That is an excellent idea,” he said.  
  


* * *

 

 

Rey had no knowledge of Alderaan’s mischief, of course, until the next time she attended Almack’s. She knew instantly that something was wrong, for she did not see Rose at first, though they had arranged to meet. A minute’s search led her to the chairs where the most timid misses sat with their mothers, and there Rose was next to hers, and Rey’s greeting was met with the stoniest silence.

It was several agonizing moments before she realized there had been no mistake: she was being snubbed, snubbed publicly and infamously, and the other ladies were beginning to stare. Mrs. Tico was resolute, but as Rey fled she saw a kind of pleading apology in Rose’s eyes.

Rey did not know what to do at first. Of course she liked some people better than others, and they her, but she had never been exposed to such abominable rudeness, and certainly not from a girl she had been calling “sister” not days before. She obtained a glass of lemonade, mouth-puckeringly tart, and sipped it, holding the stem tightly so her hands did not shake. She scanned the room for someone to cling to. Not Countess Holdo; there would be questions if she were to explain what had happened, and she did not know what she had done to deserve such censure, nor did she wish to find out in front of the Countess. It was early in the evening and none of her swains were about; she had been particularly looking forward to enjoying a day without them. The scant crowd seemed full of strangers, and very distant acquaintances. There was Lord Hux, for example, of whom she knew nothing but that he was the Duke of Alderaan’s friend…

Rey was saved by Miss Connix, who had observed the scene in its entirety. She very sensibly went to get a spare handkerchief from her mama, in case her friend began to weep, and returned to find Rey just finishing her lemonade. It was the work of an instant to spirit her away into a far corner, where neither Miss Rose nor any arriving suitors could see her, and not much more time elapsed before Rey had full intelligence of what had occurred.

To Rey’s mind, by introducing Rose and Finn she had done them both a great service—after all, they were not apt to meet unless she engineered the connection, and thereafter they were not apt to meet again unless she created opportunities, for Society had heretofore failed to see Finn’s good qualities and (despite her scheming) he was not yet received in any of the best houses. They had liked each other at first sight; at their second meeting they had fallen into an easy way of conversing; and before very long a romance was a-bloom.

To Mrs. Tico’s mind, however, Rey’s actions seemed like sabotage. Lady Snoke had called upon that worthy matron the day before yesterday to report that her dear friend Lord Alderaan had seen Rose positively flirting with a young Captain of the Army in a bookseller’s shop, and to ask if congratulations were to be rendered, and to inquire as to whether Mr. and Mrs. Tico were quite sure that the young man would keep Rose in the manner to which she was accustomed.

Over the course of a very short visit Lady Snoke acquainted them with the way that Miss Rey Jakku had served as go-between for the ill-matched couple, and had made it clear that she did not think Miss Jakku quite the thing; though no actual accusations were made, it was unsurprising that at the conclusion of the call Mrs. Tico believed Miss Jakku to be the next best thing to a madam, and (simultaneously and confusedly) believed Mr. Storm a  _ hired mount  _ (Miss Connix whispered this last, as it was a cant term which ought to be mysterious to gently bred young ladies). 

Miss Connix had had this tale not from Rose herself, but from her maid who had it from Rose’s maid, for they lived next door to each other and servants always did talk; but she swore up and down that it was true, for her abigail had never been known to lie. And, she kindly added, only the highest sticklers could blame Rey for her part in the affair.

This was a kind fiction, Rey knew. She had engineered her friends’ happiness, and she had hardly thought of the consequences were they to be found out. Rose’s mother was not a bad sort, but she wanted to see her daughter comfortably settled, and she could never be comfortably settled with a Captain entitled only to a Captain’s pay. It was entirely Rey’s fault if they were never to be permitted to speak again.

* * *

By the time Rey returned to Auntie Leia’s home, her regret and sadness had settled and hardened into anger. She had observed over the course of the night as Rose sat out dance after dance, whey-faced and staring at her hands, her mother periodically inveighing her to sit up straighter and to  _ try _ to be charming, at least  _ try. _ Rey herself did not sit idle, but danced nearly constantly, thinking that perhaps exercise would help her forget her guilt. 

Then it was time for the waltz. Rey might have had permission to waltz if she chose; Countess Holdo was more than willing to give it, but she had asked that the permission be withheld, to ensure that she had at least one dance away from her pressing suitors. Her last partner delivered her to Mrs. Mothma with a smile; she had just sat down, and been welcomed into the elderly ladies’ conversation, when a dark presence loomed over her. 

She knew instantly that it was the Duke of Alderaan, and even as the older ladies grew quiet, she continued to speak, gaily ignoring him. How dare he come near her? Had she not given him more than one sharp set-down, and taught him exactly what he had to expect from her?

“Miss Jakku,” he said.

She ignored him, though Mrs. Mothma looked up.

“Miss Jakku, I believe you are promised to me for this dance.”

Rey could not help but look up at that. “I certainly am not,” she said, “and you must know I am not permitted to waltz.”

He lifted his chin. “No,” he said simply. “Lady Snoke has given her permission.”

As one, Alderaan and Rey looked to the dais where the Patronesses sat, when they were not dancing. All three were ensconced there, a charming picture, with Countess Holdo in her habitual dove grey, Mrs. Phasma in cloth-of-silver, and Lady Snoke in cloth-of-gold, her dress’s gorgeous drapery nearly concealing the emaciation of her frame. As though signalled somehow by the Duke, Lady Snoke caught Rey’s eye and nodded imperiously. She seemed evilly amused, as though she knew just what torments her permission had plunged Rey into.

“You had better dance,” Mrs. Mothma said quietly. “You must sit the other sets out if you do not.”

Rey swallowed her irritation and said, “of course I will dance,” though she did not trouble herself to pretend that his attentions were welcome. Her obligation to Countess Holdo and Mrs. Mothma, to not make herself utterly odious, was one thing. Pretending that she found Alderaan tolerable was entirely another, particularly after he had intervened with Rose and with Finn…!

The only solution was to speak to Alderaan not at all, and it was with this intention that Rey took up her place for the march, permitting the Duke to place his arm around her and take her hand in his. He was absurdly tall; she had not thought herself short until she came to London and was surrounded by such giants as Countess Holdo, Lady Snoke, Mrs. Phasma...was it perhaps a requirement that the leading lights of Society be great gangling creatures? They must look ridiculous; Auntie Leia’s recalcitrant child had made Rey ridiculous! Oh, it was not to be borne…

Then the music struck up, and they were off, and it was not ridiculous at all. Against Rey’s will she found her feet falling into pattern with the Duke’s. She could feel the eyes of the room on them, and particularly Lady Snoke’s eyes, cold and snakelike, but for a moment she was lost in the pleasure of dancing with a skilled partner and could almost forget who that partner was.

“You cannot go an entire dance without speaking,” the Duke said, as they entered into the pirouetting section that would bring them closest together. Even in the intolerable heat of the ballroom she could feel the heat from his body—he must run like a furnace. 

“Can I not?” Rey asked, resolutely turning her gaze away.

“You are angry with me.”

“Well spotted.”

“You do not know the first thing about Society.” Rey held her tongue, knowing that arguing would only make her angrier, seeking only to last the remainder of the dance without flying out at him. “You think it is a game to induce your friend to fall in love with a person she has no business encountering, to raise the hopes of a man of no background whatsoever, but even though he marry her, there can be nothing but ruin in it—”

“Finn is an honorable man, and you are a meddling bounder, and I would not have danced with you if I had had  _ any  _ recourse, so be silent or I shall scream that you have—have outraged me!”

“As you wish,” the Duke ground out, his face purpling with repressed rage, and his fingers tightening against Rey’s body in a way that nearly  _ was _ an outrage.

They finished the dance in stony silence, and the instant the music ceased they parted from each other, Alderaan not even bothering to escort his partner to her companion; Rey could not be upset at his ill manners, however, as she did not wish to remain in his vicinity for a moment longer than she had to.

“But it occurs to me,” Rey said to Leia later that evening, as she sipped warm milk in an attempt to calm her nerves before bed, “that he must be imagining that Rose’s situation is like yours was. I realize it is a great impertinence to ask, but—were things really so bad, with Mr. Solo?”

Leia looked to heaven as though pleading for a less impertinent question, and began with “ _ Well _ ,” which was not a positive omen. But she continued on with “that is a difficult question, my dear,” which Rey took to mean that she was not entirely put out. “You must understand that Mr. Solo and I were not well matched.” 

Rey could not stifle a laugh. Leia tried and failed to look disapproving. “Well, we were not—but I was a child of nineteen and it is impossible, impossible to tell a child of nineteen anything. Yes, I  _ know _ you are nineteen, and if you were even one year older my life would be much easier, let me tell you! But rather than doing my duty and marrying some filthy old man with a fortune in the Funds, I met and married Mr. Solo and had not a single word of apology for anyone.

“What Ben cannot forgive,” and it took Rey a moment to realize that Leia was speaking of Alderaan, “is that I did not grow out of my youthful rebellion, which Ben believes killed his grandfather. He will not listen when I say that his grandfather actually expressed admiration for—and in any case his heart had been diseased since I was a child. And there were enough stresses to fell an ox, with Alderaan so deep under water. But the real difficulty is that rather than blaming me, like a sensible person, Ben insists that it is all his father’s fault.

“Now Ben is not a  _ misogynist,  _ I believe, and I do not believe he even truly holds women to be weak-willed; but it is much easier for him to blame his father for his ills than it is to accept that the world is generally a nasty place, or to understand that he was an eight-month baby and his mother a little trollop who would have had him on the wrong side of the sheets if his father had not convinced her to elope.”

This was rather more truth than Rey had counted on, and it shocked her into silence. Of course  _ she _ had spoken of by-blows and slips-on-the-shoulder as though it mattered not at all, but somehow the effect was different coming from the lips of a matron of fifty and more! She finished the last of her milk to cover her astonishment. 

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, child,” Leia said, “I am quite on the side of the trollops. And half of Ben’s furor comes from the fact that he was not the be-all and end-all of my existence, and that I considered my writing quite as important as my duties to my sainted ancestors. He will come around some day, perhaps.”

“But your marriage did not come out well for you, in the end,” Rey managed to essay.

“Who’s to say? I have my independence—my father did not lose  _ that,  _ thank goodness. If Ben has been left with a great rambling pile to maintain and too much pride to try his hand at business, or to marry a heiress, that is hardly my concern. I did what I could for him, until he decided he preferred Eustacia Snoke’s guidance to mine, and now he must make his own way.” 

This attitude chimed so well with Rey’s own experience of parenting that it did not occur to her that anyone might see it as unnatural: what was a mother to Rey beyond someone who abandoned you? And Leia had certainly not abandoned her son. Then, she was also not wise enough to see the wistfulness in Leia’s manner, or to realize that the words people say do not always agree with the feelings they hold in their hearts.

  
Illustration by [Proporgo](http://proporgo.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

It was rising ten o’clock on a beautiful, sunny morning when the news of tragedy came to Lady Leia Solo’s house—tragedy as unexpected as any ever known or heard of.

Leia was in her writing-room, at the magnificent rolltop desk, with Gary at her feet, working on a new volume of political philosophy. It was rather beyond Rey’s ken, but she enjoyed keeping Leia company, so she had established herself in the plush window-seat and was desultorily sewing on the as-yet unembellished hem of a petticoat. She was not a notable needleworker, but she had little else to do, having sorted out the rain-gutters and improved the drainage in the back garden immediately upon her arrival in London.

There was a clatter downstairs, and raised voices; footsteps up the stair itself; then Lord Hux appeared in the door, still wearing his enormous greatcoat, his Hessians polished to a high gleam.

“Lady Leia,” he said. “Miss Jakku. Please forgive the intrusion.”

The footmen seemed to have rallied, and with Mr. Threepio the butler surged up-stairs and through the doorway with the evident intent of throwing Lord Hux out; faced with their return, Hux seemed to think better of elaborate speeches, and said quite baldly: “Lord Alderaan met with Mr. Solo this morning, and has killed him.”

Mr. Threepio, an old and beloved family retainer, staggered and sat heavily on a convenient side-table, which fortunately held his weight. Leia, to her credit, did not gasp or cry. Her face fell blank, and for a moment she gripped the carved armrests of her chair so tightly Rey imagined the wood would splinter. “Thank you, Lord Hux,” she said, in polite and colorless tones. “Have you any knowledge of the nature of the quarrel?”

“None that I may communicate to you. It was a private matter.” Private! Rey thought. Private, when it is Leia’s son and husband! “I am sorry to be the bearer of such evil news,” he said. “You will be pleased to know that Lord Alderaan remains unhurt, and does not expect to be required to leave the country.” But Rey thought she saw a faint sadistic pleasure in his unembarrassed gaze.

“Please leave now,” Leia said.

 

* * *

 

Of course, the death of Mr. Solo was the greatest story of the season.

Half the  _ ton _ held it was an unforgivable sin to kill one’s father in a duel, no matter the circumstance. It proved, they said, that Alderaan was as heartless as he had ever been reputed, and furthermore that he was surely damned to Hell (though ladies tended to say “condemned to perdition”) for Disrespecting One’s Mother and Father, which was, after all, a Commandment.

The other half of the  _ ton _ held that Mr. Solo was a rake, a cheat, a smuggler and a liar who had destroyed Lord Alderaan’s mother’s life and then abandoned her, who had positively neglected Lord Alderaan himself as a child, and who had surely done something specific to deserve it. The most widely-held theory was that Solo had debauched a girl of good family, but others held that he had made remarks insulting to Lady Leia’s virtue in Lord Alderaan’s hearing. 

In any case, as a peer of the realm, Lord Alderaan hardly had to worry about the concerns of the police, who might have hassled a man of lesser status, and it had been given out to the papers that Mr Solo had been killed in a tragic fencing accident. That the duel had been with sabres made it seem, somehow, more horrible to Rey: Lord Alderaan would have had to look his father in the eye, to feel the life ebb from him. He must have been downright bloodied. That was why he did not come to speak to Lady Leia himself, but sent his second instead, she supposed.

She would have discovered none of this without the help of both Finn and Bebe, for no one would speak to her of the events of that fateful morning, even when put directly to the question. Even within the household information was scanty: she learned from Mr. Threepio that Mr. Solo was not to be buried in the family plot, where scions of Alderaan had lain with their spouses since time immemorial, at his son’s decree, and that this was a scandal, but Leia did not speak a word of concern or complaint to Rey.

Indeed, Leia was worryingly stoic. She put on mourning again and labored at her book night and day. “For,” she said, “my publisher has most particularly requested that it be finished by the end of the Season; and in any case, I cannot amuse myself with any propriety. But you must—for it won’t be the Season much longer,” and she was correct. Rey was not in mourning, not being connected in any tangible way with Mr. Solo, and therefore if she wished to go out she might reasonably join any party headed by a respectable matron. 

At first Rey’s amusements were small, card-parties and perhaps a breakfast; but soon Miss Connix begged her to go to Mrs. Krennic’s ball, and she could hardly say no. For young people, tragedy may be felt deeply, but never for long, and though Rey’s concern for her guardian was not less, her eyes had long since dried.

 

* * *

 

The night of Mrs. Krennic’s ball, Rey was well in looks. She dressed in pure white, with deceptive simplicity, and wove her pearls through her hair as usual; there were pearl clasps on her dancing-slippers and tiny pearl buttons down her back, but she cinched the high waist of her dress tight with a red riband that matched the red of her mouth. Kaydel had chosen blue for her accents, and as they entered arm-in-arm they formed a lovely picture. Lady Snoke, Rey knew, had a low opinion of Kaydel, and would probably not permit her to receive vouchers next Season; but there was not an ounce of harm in her, only high spirits and a love of horses that  _ would _ lead her to racing in the Park.

Rey could hardly be insensible of the tall, dark figure of Lord Alderaan on the outskirts of the crush, but she did her best to ignore him. It was impossible to make a scene. She gave him the cut direct, and Kaydel loyally did the same, though Rey knew Mrs. Connix would extract a price for this rejection of an eligible bachelor; she expected to have nothing more to do with him for the balance of the evening, and turned her attention instead to her swains, who at least had no intention of bringing up topics that might be odious to the Incomparable. She worried that Mr. Cardinal was on the brink of a proposal, him having come to condole with her over Mr. Solo’s death twice in the span of a week, and felt it necessary to visibly enjoy herself with each of her other admirers in turn. 

After several dances, Rey declared that she was tired and had the headache, and that she would cure this affliction by a quiet sit-down and a glass of orgeat; fortunately there were somewhat more women than men, and Mr. Cardinal was obliged to stand up with a wallflower for the next dance or be counted uncouth and unjust to the ladies. As it came to an end, however, he was sure to be back, along with all the other gentlemen; Rey found that, while her headache had initially been a ruse, it was now a reality, and cast around her for a route of escape. Spying a door left ajar, she abandoned her glass and slipped through.

On the other side of the door was a library. It was not large nor particularly grand, though furnished with a high-backed settee of tufted leather as well as the traditional and very masculine desk; the books on the shelves were the sort one might buy in a crate, packaged for the furnishing of a townhouse’s library, if one had no books of one’s own to fill it with. Still, under the circumstances it seemed to Rey a perfect Eden. Not wishing to read, she idled about, running one finger across the leather spines and feeling their comforting bump-bump-bump.

It was this activity that brought her around the corner of the settee, and when she had rounded the corner she realized she was not alone. Hidden by the tall back, hunched in an effort not to be seen, was His Grace the Duke of Alderaan; in the other, her pretty face twisted in a grimace, was Lady Carise Sindian.

In an instant Rey saw how it must be. His Grace had inveigled Lady Carise to come with him, somehow; or perhaps he had led her to believe that he had honorable intentions, and that they could be heard only in privacy. But His Grace’s posture illustrated that he did not want to be caught alone with Lady Carise, and her grimace illustrated that her hopes (whatever they were) had been dashed.

In times of trouble, Rey’s instinct from a child had been to place some obstacle between herself and the threat; so rather than absent herself from the scene, or bravely try to throw herself between Lady Carise and His Grace’s unwelcome maulings, she tried to dart behind the desk. It was no use: in an instant Lord Alderaan had stood and clasped her wrist in a grip of iron. “Sneaking about, is it?” he said, his lip curled. “I don’t suppose you’ll have the sense to cut me now like you did in the ballroom—oh, I noticed all your little rudenesses!”

“Let me  _ go, _ ” Rey spat, and twisted her hand in a way she had learned on the streets, freeing herself for a moment, but Ren caught her again and held her arms fast, pinning her against the desk so firmly that she was obliged to nearly sit on its surface. He was far too close; she could feel the warmth of his body through layers of muslin and wool. Running hot. “Lady Carise, go, I can handle him,” she said, though she was not at all certain that she could. “I know all about you, Duke; should I politely greet a pompous affected—”

She had been about to call him a  _ bastard, _ rude as that might be to Lady Leia and the memory of Mr. Solo, and unthinkable as it might be for a young lady to use such a term, but the door to the library swung open and Mr. Cardinal strode in.

It took not a moment for him to observe the scene, and draw his own conclusions: Lord Alderaan, the Butcher of London, lost to all propriety, had lured the Incomparable away from her friends and seduced her; Lady Carise Sindian had discovered their tryst moments before, as they were still locked in sinful embrace, but being a weak woman was unable to rescue Miss Jakku from the Dark Duke, and fainted on the settee; Mr. Cardinal was therefore cast in the role of Hero, and obligated to call Lord Alderaan out, and perhaps to marry the Ruined Beauty and save her name. “Ren!” he declaimed, in what he must have thought of as ringing tones, “unhand the Incomparable, and name your seconds!”

Some demon caused the ballroom to fall silent, in one of those eerie coincidental silences, at just the wrong moment.

“Is he speaking of Rey Jakku?” asked the high and commanding voice of Lady Snoke, floating over the crush, as the rest of polite Society processed what they had heard.

Then all havoc broke loose.

 

* * *

 

The carriage-ride home was a trial. Kaydel was silent and pitying; Mrs. Connix constantly sniffed at her sal volatile. It was not difficult to convince Mrs. Connix that she need not come in; her presence would only underscore the public nature of what had happened; no, Rey would do very well on her own. 

In truth Rey did not want to relive the scene—Mr. Cardinal enacting a Cheltenham tragedy, Lord Alderaan seething with fury and Lady Carise empurpled with emotion, Lady Snoke’s disdainful and somehow satisfied gaze. There was no hope of secrecy, Rey knew. Indeed, though she had held her head high and kept her wits about her until the Connixs’ carriage had rolled away, she was beginning to feel extremely low.

There was no point, she told herself, in informing Lady Leia of what had occurred at the ball  _ right _ away; it was very late; she was undoubtedly already asleep, Gary snoring peacefully at her feet. It had long been Rey’s custom to awaken them, when she arrived home, but there was no reason the custom had to persist. In morning sunlight everything would look better; she would tell Lady Leia then. She crept to her room, readied herself for bed, and curled up, feeling rather proud of herself for not crying at any stage.

The next morning, however, she was awakened by Bebe, who communicated (in a torrent of excited French) that Lord Alderaan was here, and refusing to go away, or to see Lady Leia; indeed, that he had something most particular to say to Rey, and that he would not leave until he had.

Rey passed a hand over her face and lay for nearly a minute, imagining that perhaps by merely wishing she might be transported back in time to the previous day, when her reputation had not been ruined.

This strategy not proving effective, she levered herself up, determining that if she was required to see Lord Alderaan, she need not make herself beautiful for him. Accordingly, it did not take her long to array herself in a very old and outmoded day-dress and to pull her hair into some semblance of order, entirely eschewing the curling-tongs Bebe begged her to use. Rey’s face looked pale and stretched in the mirror. 

Alderaan had been sent to wait in the library. Rey had the advantage of him for a moment as she came in. He was seated in a high-backed leather chair rather as though he owned the place—which, Rey realized, it was very possible that he did, and only let Lady Leia use it as a dowager’s right. He was devouring a book on rational farming techniques, a book which Rey had caused to be added to the many volumes Lady Leia already owned, and seemed to have already read many pages of it. A fast reader, then, she supposed. Had he been to Oxford or Cambridge? She didn’t know, although with his mother he must have had the brains for it. But perhaps he didn’t wish to be a scholar. His face was almost handsome in repose.

“You came to see me, sir,” Rey said, and was gratified to see him twitch as he looked up. His expression shuttered; he looked older, somehow, and less kind.

“You cannot pretend to be innocent of why.”

“But I am,” Rey protested, not moving from the doorway. 

“Close that door,” he said, and when she made no move to do so crossed the room to do it himself, brushing by her too close for comfort. Last night they had been in a library at Mrs. Krennic’s ball, Rey thought; she was for ever alone with Alderaan in libraries…

“I have compromised your reputation,” Lord Alderaan said, “and it is therefore incumbent upon me to make amends. You have no family; my mother is the closest thing to your guardian, and I am her nearest male relative; so all may be accomplished expediently. I will not insult your intelligence by wasting tender words on you. We are both aware how hollow they must be.”

Rey examined Lord Alderaan, little Ben Solo. He was quivering with some deep-held emotion, though what it was she could not say. Anger, she supposed, at being brought to this pass. He was dressed for a funeral, as always, his coat so finely cut that it might as well have been molded to his powerful torso. Dark circles beneath his eyes confessed that he had not slept.

“Am I to understand these… statements… as a proposal of marriage?” she asked.

“I fail see any other way they might be understood.”

Rey did not have to think long. She had thought of little else all night. “I shall not bother to do the pretty,” she said. “You have spoken plainly with me and I shall speak plainly to you. I will not have you, and I am shocked that you ever believed I would.”

His brow furrowed and he looked even less kind than before. “I may have misheard you.”

“I will not say that I am sorry that I cannot give you another answer.”

“You must be under some misapprehension.” He spoke slowly, but she could see the tension building in him with each word, his muscles setting into a hunched and angry posture, his fingers curling and then reflexively uncurling as he realized what he was doing. “Without the cover of my name, you will be cut by every one of your friends. Miss Rose Tico will never speak to you again. Captain Storm will have his half-pay and little else—I shall exercise my influence, if being connected with your shame was not enough to convince the world that he cannot be a gentleman. My mother will not permit you to remain under her roof…”

Rey’s anger rose at that, rose to meet his and furiously clash. “It has not occurred to you,” she said, “that your mother’s Christian kindness would not allow her to forsake anyone of her acquaintance—not even you, who murdered her husband!” In her wrath she did not care that Alderaan, already close, was advancing on her. She stepped lightly backwards, through the room and around the armchair, leaning over its back to taunt him. “But I much prefer the country to the city; one Season is more than enough for me, I think, so even if she were to turn me off it would be no matter. And as for my friends, what more harm can be done? I know well that Finn will never cut a dash in society—not so long as you are one of its arbiters. You have already separated me from Rose. You have no power over me, my lord, for I have nothing left for you to take away!”

“You are  _ wrong _ ,” Alderaan hissed, and Rey knew from her time on the streets that she had raised the ire of a man who would not be afraid to use his fists—although probably not in his mother’s library. He probably thought that he looked like a panther as he stalked around the room, she thought, a twinge of amusement breaking through her irritation, but he was wrong; he was not graceful enough for that. He was like a great black bull, and woe betide the china shop—but, she supposed, he did not know what he was doing, or really intend any harm; he seemed rather too stupid in his passion. She had learned to handle a bull when she came to Ahch-To Hall, and she knew how to handle him.

He lurched around the armchair; she could not tell if his goal was to punish her or to ravish her. The difference in size between them was just about the same as the difference in size between Rey and the drunken, ill-tempered bawd at the end of the street she had mostly slept in as a child, and he lurched in just the same way. It was no difficulty to slip under his arm, and while he was still off balance, fling herself through the door.

“Mr. Threepio!” she called, as she fled up the stairs and to the safety of Lady Leia’s bedchamber, feeling as though she had won some very important battle. “I believe Lord Alderaan is leaving!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry...this is hardly the last we'll hear about Han. But: Tell me what you think! I'm @fernybranca on Twitter, and I love all feedback.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey’s buoyant mood did not last.

Lady Leia was not in her bedchamber. She was not in her writing-room either, nor partaking of breakfast. “Her Ladyship is in the family sitting room,” Threepio said, when Rey inquired, “entertaining Countess Holdo. She desired me to request that you join them.”

The ladies were seated next to each other on a couch, speaking low enough that no servant might possibly hear. Upon Rey’s entrance their spines stiffened as one.

“If you are going to call me to account,” Rey said, taking the offensive, “I think it neither fair nor right.”

The Countess’ brows nearly shot to her hairline. “If we are going to call you to account? Pray, tell us why you should be called to account?”

“Well—I imagine you may have heard some very distressing things about what occurred at Mrs. Krennic’s ball last night.”

“Yes,” the Countess said, “but that is hardly all. Have you seen Mr. Storm recently?” Rey had to admit she had not spoken with him in a week or more. “You will be surprised to hear, then, that he was seen at Almack’s two nights ago.”

Rey was surprised; she had told Finn that she did not like to ask Countess Holdo to sponsor him to Almack’s until he was better-known, but as Lady Leia mourned Mr. Solo she had been unable to help him progress in this regard. He could not have gained vouchers in any other way—certainly not without Rey knowing. In confusion, she said so, and that she had no knowledge of his attendance there.

“You were certainly right to think that I could not help your Mr. Storm to Almack’s,” the Countess said sternly. “I am glad to know that you had no part in his pretensions to it. You will be grieved to learn that your friend Lieutenant Dameron brought him there on a Stranger’s Ticket. He was abominably ill-dressed, and they were denied entrance.”

Rey shut her eyes, imagining Lieutenant Dameron’s casual way of dismissing all obstacles—imagining how humiliated Finn must have been when he was turned away, imagining how he must have cursed himself for being inveigled into such a rash course by such an unsteady friend. When she opened her eyes again, the Countess and Lady Leia were still there, looking at her with slight concern. “I am—sensible of the position in which this combination of events must have put you, ma’am,” she said to Countess Holdo.

“Are you?” she asked. “Lady Snoke and Mrs. Phasma are extremely put out with me. They will be even more put out then they learn that you have no intention of marrying Lord Alderaan.”

Rey blinked. “Ma’am?”

Lady Leia wrinkled her nose. “Oh, do sit down, Rey, you are behaving like a goose, or like you believe yourself to be the protagonist of a Gothic novel. You cannot tell us that you thought we would force you to marry my son. Young people are fools, but you are not as much of a fool as that!”

It was with relief that Rey seated herself, not across from the two old ladies, but next to them. “I will own that the thought had—had crossed my mind _ , _ ma’am,” she said.

“What is this ‘ma’am’? Now I know you believe you have done wrong, for young people like you are never polite unless they feel they must be,” Lady Leia said.

“It is not that I have done wrong. Lord Alderaan has done wrong! I am sorry to grieve you, but he was annoying Lady Carise Sindian, and in private too, and had I not interrupted them I am certain that he would have done her an outrage. Then Mr. Cardinal came in. He utterly misunderstood the situation, but there is no telling him anything, I need not say, for he is always certain he knows best.” A horrifying thought occurred to her. “You do not mean that I should marry  _ him _ ? For he offered almost the instant that he saw that I had been in a queer situation, and I do not think I could bear to do it.” 

“No, no!” Leia laughed. “But you say my son was annoying Lady Carise; did she not come to your support?”

Rey bit her lip. “She did not. I cannot think she behaved just as she ought,” she said, “but I dare say her mother would have scolded her for it, if she had, for the only outcome would have been that she were ruined too.”

The Countess snorted in a most unladylike manner, one which Rey would have expected more from Leia than from the esteemed patroness of Almack’s, and for a second she could envision the pair as young misses just out, merrily roasting their entire acquaintance. “Likely she realized that Alderaan would never come up to scratch.”

“But he did come up to scratch,” Rey said, “just now, in the library, and I am afraid I teased him into a fury, and Mr. Threepio threw him out of your house.”

“It is his fault if he cannot mend his temper,” the lord’s mother said, most unperturbed. “And of course he came up to scratch for  _ you _ . You would be the making of him.”

This puzzled Rey not a little; but she let it go, for the Countess said, “of course you did not accept him. I do not think you should, but my opinion, as you know, is not the same as Lady Snoke’s or Mrs. Phasma’s. They had their hearts set that Alderaan should have your fortune, and if this mischance had not occurred, another might well have been contrived for you. 

“You must know I cannot stand against them. Whatever I might say, your vouchers will surely be revoked, alongside Lieutenant Dameron’s; and I am afraid that it is not only the most top-lofty that will cut you. You may well never see most of your acquaintance again.”

Countess Holdo might have expected a girl brought up differently than Rey to burst into tears at this information. Rey had, however, thrown her utter indifference to polite society in Lord Alderaan’s face only moments before; therefore no tears were forthcoming. Instead Rey said “yes, ma’am, I could hardly expect otherwise. Nor do I wish to subject Lady Leia to further gossip; if you like I will remove myself and hire a house.”

“Hire a house? No, child! Do you think me an ogre?”

“No, no! But I am so relieved to hear you say so! For I told Lord Alderaan that you would never throw me out, and I would hate to be a liar.” Rey laughed a little. “But you must let me tell you how Lord Alderaan spoke to me just now, for I will not have you ignorant of what will surely be spoken of…”

The distance of a few minutes’ time had made the scene in the library a source of amusement to Rey, and they laughed their way through her description of Alderaan’s brooding and raging. Still, as she recounted his threats against Finn and Rose, and as Countess Holdo frankly listed the persons who might be expected to cut her now (and which invitations Rey ought to politely send regrets for, as she did not intend to push herself into the company of those who now found her distasteful) the absolute change in her situation began to sink in. 

Not only would she never see Rose again, she realized, but neither would Finn.

 

* * *

 

It was rare indeed that Ren had been subjected to such humiliation as being thrown out of his own childhood home—and not by his forceful, rogueish father or any other such worthy foe, but by the superannuated butler.

Of course he could not hit Threepio. Of course he could not destroy Mama’s library. He might destroy a  _ part _ of it, but not all of it. He would pay for what he had ruined. ( _ Except those things you can never get back, _ a treacherous voice whispered to him, but he shut it down. He would not think of his father now.)

He would certainly pay for what he had ruined in his own home. Two Wedgwood vases, for example.

Ren never cursed his own temper, however. His servants, though few, were ancient family retainers—those who had refused to work for his scandal of a mother—and they would never remonstrate with him about it. The costs would add up, quietly, in a column of his housekeeper’s account book, and they would be shown to him at the end of the quarter, and he would sign his name to them, and if he had to close his hunting box this year, well, he would start a fashion, and only the veriest slowtops would be seen at Melton. Or so he told himself.

After these depredations, and after a satisfying sojourn to Gentleman Jackson’s establishment (the great boxer himself stepped back from a match, allowing Ren to flatten an upstart young man who needed a hard lesson), he found himself much better able to think clearly about Miss Rey Jakku, and he found himself not a particle less attracted to her than he had been before the morning’s interview.

He did not know what he had expected from Miss Jakku, but defiant refusal was not it. Before he had met her, he had expected a demimondaine; after he met her, he had thought her a mushroom, though one with quite a bit of address. He had reckoned her reluctance to conform to society’s dictates as coquettishness, and he had reckoned her appearances at Almacks and in other such fashionable environs as evidence that she intended to transcend his mother’s reputation and snag herself a respectable husband. Hux, he would have thought, would be about her level—she certainly could not hope for more than a baron.

Now, however, his assumptions were all cast into doubt. His first impulse was to think that Miss Jakku had collaborated with Lady Carise to entrap him, in such a way that one or the other of them was sure to win the matrimonial prize. But it was impossible. He was certain Lady Carise would have clawed Miss Jakku’s eyes out before yield an inch to her in the fight for the Dark Duke. 

In any case, Miss Jakku could not have expected that Lady Snoke would come out in her favor. She certainly had never spoken up for any girl Ren had trifled with in the past—had indeed encouraged them to dangle after him most disgustingly, and then told him that she would cut him if he offered for them. 

And after Lady Snoke had all but read the banns in the midst of Mrs. Krennic’s saloon? After she had pulled him aside and said, “My dear Alderaan. I trust you know your heroic role,” which was as good as an order to offer for Miss Jakku? 

Why—Miss Jakku had  _ not wanted him. _

That was not coquettishness. He could not pretend to himself it was, not even to salve a stinging sense of pride. She did not want anything to do with him. She was beautiful, and young, and vivacious, and she saw nothing in the Dark Duke worth having. Who could blame her? The ninnies who ran after him hardly knew him, after all, and cared only for the hunt, bagging the greatest prize. If any of them saw beneath the coronet they would have a rather different opinion. If any of them were intelligent enough to see beneath the coronet. And Miss Jakku, it seemed, was.

Ren poured himself a brandy. It was early yet and he was not, by and large, a tippler, having found that his already fractious temper grew worse under the influence of strong drink, but this once he felt he could indulge himself.

His own inclination, he could admit now, was indeed towards Miss Jakku. The matter of her fortune, derived as it was from Baron Skywalker, was a secondary concern. When he thought of her he thought, perversely, not of her unexceptionable appearances at Almack’s, but at the fire in her eyes as she shouted at him, covered in mud and grease, the first time he had met her. He had not known how utterly insipid shrinking misses were until he knew Miss Jakku, yet there was nothing unbecoming there, only a simplicity and honesty that everyone must admire.

But she loathed him. And she was not the wife for him. She was the second coming of his mother—froward, radical even, unconventional at the least. Were they to be married Lady Snoke might promote the match, but he would have to be a severe husband indeed to repress her spirits. If they married, would she be ruled by him? No; he would have to convince her. She was not a dog, to respond to a master’s commanding voice. But  _ could _ she be ruled by him? Possibly not. His mother never had been. Though his mother had known him from a child, known him as an awkward youth aspiring to be a pink of the ton—Miss Jakku might yet hold a healthy respect…

He was fooling himself. These were idle imaginings. Miss Jakku was not for him, and he was not for her.

It was with these thoughts that Ren consoled himself as he finished his glass of brandy. His hound Mordred approached, and was permitted to sit on his lap—for Mordred was a black animal and thus unlikely to sully his breeches with visible fur. He poured himself another brandy, idly scratching Mordred’s haunches in just the spot calculated to provide greatest canine pleasure, and sipped it slowly, feeling his tension subside. It was always thus: his rages first expressed themselves in physical violence, then in pressing anxiety, and he was obliged to seek solace in drink and from his dogs, who cared not a whit if their master’s feelings were inappropriate but only wished to see him happy.

It was in this disposition that Miss Jakku found him when she came to accept his offer of marriage.

* * *

 

 

It took Rey nearly twenty-four hours from the disastrous encounter at Mrs. Krennic’s ball to become capable of thinking, rather than feeling. Once she had, she came to realize that she had misunderstood several things very badly.

The first thing she had misunderstood, and had been coming to a greater understanding of over the course of the season, was money. As a starving child, she had not known much, but she had known that people with many round shiny coins could afford to buy fresh bread instead of day-olds; she had known that they did not need to steal apples from the fruiterer’s stall. As a young woman, she had understood that money properly invested and ploughed back into the land would make fields more fertile, shopkeepers more prosperous; Luke had taught her that. At first when she inherited, she had believed that money could open every door to her, and it almost had—even the doors of St. James’s would have been open if she had cared to go and Lady Leia had cared to take her.

But though she invested her money in Finn she could not change his circumstances completely. She could give him better, easier and more honorable work; she could give him an income to command the luxuries of life, or in any case more of the luxuries than he ever had before; but she could not buy his way into tonnish circles, and she was coming to see that it was a miracle that she had been permitted even to attend  _ one _ ton party herself.

And that would hardly matter—it would mean nothing at all, in fact—for she was not convinced that the ton was any better than any other group of persons in England, and quite possibly they were worse: the Bond Street beaux were quite intolerable, for instance. But Finn had lost his heart to Miss Rose Tico, and Miss Rose was very good ton.

The second thing she had misunderstood was marriage, and this was probably because she had not expected to marry. What future Luke had envisioned for her she did not know; but she had been very aware, growing up at Ahch-To Hall, that she would not be considered a proper mate for any of the young men at the neighboring manor houses. Then, too the servants and the young men in the village considered her to be far above their touch.

But marriage, she now realized, was the way to confirm one’s social standing; it meant far more than money, for it wove one into the great tapestry of families stretching back and back and back. Lady Leia’s set might not care about it, but nearly everyone else did, and the only difference between London and the countryside was that in London people thought on a larger scale than  _ does her father’s land march with mine. _

And this was why she was permitted to Almack’s: on the presumption that she would wed and return Baron Skywalker’s money to the hands of the very oldest and most honored families, on the presumption that she would weave herself into their tapestry.

Lord Alderaan had said as much to her. He had told her that she would be cast out for refusing. But that was casting the affair in the most negative light. If he had wanted to be persuasive, Rey thought, he ought to have told her about what powers she would gain by accepting.

There were very few Dukes, and Alderaan the only one unmarried. This was the source of his fantastic power of the minds of debutantes and their mamas alike. Once he married, he would maintain his seat in the House of Lords, but his status among the ton would be diminished: he would no longer be a prize.

Rey’s case was very different. She was accepted only on the strength of her fortune—now. If she married a man without breeding, or refused to marry at all, she would not be in any better position. But as the Duchess of Alderaan, as the mama to the future Duke... why, any intelligent young woman would think ahead to her own children’s Seasons, fifteen or twenty years in the future. Who would not want to forge such a friendship? Mrs. Tico would be delighted to know her daughter was the bosom-bow of so important a personage. And if the Duchess of Alderaan said that, for instance, Finn Storm was her avowed favorite—who would reject him then? And if these were still insuperable obstacles, could the Duchess of Alderaan not call on her husband’s friends Lady Snoke and Mrs. Phasma, and induce them to endorse Captain Storm? After all, those ladies would be so  _ pleased _ to learn that the Skywalker money had returned to their dear Ren’s coffers…

The matter of Mr. Solo was a larger obstacle to Rey’s mind. She had known murderers in her time, and the murdered: her dearest friend at the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls had been left alone in the aftermath of a shocking murder-suicide, and had been unable to sleep, poor thing, for the memories that intruded on her. But patricide…

Patricide under the cover of a duel. Would the great Lord Alderaan mistreat his wife? He might. She did not think she saw in him the cruelty necessary for that, but then, she had misjudged people before. But even were he cruel enough, would he be uncivilized enough? He could excuse Mr. Solo’s death to himself as a duty, as an unpleasant task required of his honor, she imagined. He could not excuse the ill-treatment of a wife that way. And she would have her own money. And she would not be afraid to do whatever was necessary to win her freedom, if it came to that.

No, she thought, considering marriage to Lord Alderaan was not tantamount to signing her own death-warrant. He would wed her and bed her and be done with it. They would live separately thereafter.

Once Rey had come to these conclusions, it was a simple matter to walk downstairs and have the carriage brought round. It was very late, but no one argued that she ought to stay at home; comings and goings at Lady Leia’s house had always been irregular. She wished it had been possible to take her own curricle; alone on the seat she had to press her hands into the cushion to keep them from shaking.

Lord Alderaan’s townhouse was a great towering pile which she supposed must have been part of the estate, far larger than any unwed man could possibly need, at least twice the size of Lady Leia’s establishment. Light burned in only a few windows, and Rey suddenly wondered what she would do if he was not in, or would not see her. 

The walk from the street to the front door, a matter of steps, seemed very long indeed, and when the door was answered by a supercilious butler, she nearly quailed.

“Lord Alderaan does not receive guests at this odd hour,” he informed her.

He did not address her with contempt precisely, but he did not say “ma’am” either, and she was certain he must think her very strange indeed: in Lady Leia’s house they did not dress for dinner  _ en famille  _ (Leia finding it an unnecessary complication for the simple act of consuming food) _ , _ and Rey had not thought to change into proper evening clothes. He could not think her a demimondaine when she came to the door wearing an unembellished muslin day-dress, but he could not think her a lady either.

Well, if she was not a lady now, she soon would be. She breathed in and lifted her chin, feeling her spine stretch upward. “Does Alderaan receive his fiancée?” she asked—and pushed past the astonished butler, who could not bring himself to lay hands on a woman who carried herself so confidently. She walked as if she owned the house already, guessing that Alderaan would be in the first-floor room she had seen lit from the street. When no servant opened the door for her, she did it herself, and found that she had been right.

He sat in a comfortable and masculine saloon. The walls were paneled in dark wood, giving it an old-fashioned air; with the fire ablaze it was nearly stuffy. She realized with a shock that he was in his shirtsleeves, his cravat undone, a glass of some amber liquid in his hand. The crystal-and-silver carafe carelessly unstoppered on a table; she hoped he was not foxed. A small and nearly emaciated black dog lay across his lap. Its fur stood up and it began to growl at Rey’s appearance.

“You,” he said, closed his eyes, opened them again, “what in the Devil’s name are you doing here?”

“I am come to accept your offer of marriage,” Rey said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated the tags, because I decided "forced marriage" wasn't quite right... no one's exactly forcing Rey. Let me know if you disagree with this choice—I'm on the fence myself!


	7. Chapter 7

Ren might have thought himself to be hallucinating Miss Jakku if Mordred had not growled so convincingly at her. He supposed that a dog’s growl did not rule out the presence of a ghost—surely animals could see spirits?—but as of that morning she had been very much alive, and he could not imagine that suicide was in her nature.

What foolish thoughts. “I am come to accept your offer of marriage,” she repeated, slowly, as though he were a particularly stupid child.

“Are you?” he drawled.

“Yes,” she said, and actually stamped her foot in annoyance.

“To become the Duchess of Alderaan?” he said, swirling the liquid in his glass. The dog continued to make disconsolate little noises, his ears pricked. “Quiet, Mordred.”

“You named your dog _Mordred?_ ” Miss Jakku’s face was guileless. “You do _know_ the story of King Arthur? Oh, do not mind. Of course you would name your dog after a villain, and then starve him into ferocity.”

Ren was grateful that his sallow cheeks did not color easily, for a juvenile sense of embarrassment filled him that she would mistake him so badly. Still— “Oh, and yet you will marry the Dark Duke, the villain of the piece,” he said. “Go home to my mother, stupid girl.”

He regretted that; it was beneath him. “No,” she said, “even you would not be so dramatic. I expect you have a pack of dogs named after the Knights of the Round Table at your hunting box. Did you include Guenivere? Or Arthur? And it was unfair of me: an idiot could see Mordred is a whippet, and probably does not become fat no matter how indulged he is.”

Somehow this was even worse: she had seen Ren as he really was from the beginning, and had purposely misconstrued him in order to make him an object of fun. “I want no apologies from you,” he said. “But I must confess I wonder what has brought about this great change of heart. Has Mother put the screws on you? Or Holdo, that old cat?”

“Nothing of the sort,” Rey said, and if she had ever lost her footing she had evidently found it again, for she moved to him and boldly put forth her hand for Mordred to sniff. “They would not be so cruel as to wed me to a famous patricide. I saw the very great sense in the rational arguments you made me, as to why I should consent.”

This statement, simultaneously pompous and cutting, made him think back to the morning. What had he said to her? He hardly knew. Their interview seemed a blur, though he was very aware that he had consumed no liquid courage before calling upon her. No, he remembered what he had said. “Do you care for Miss Tico’s friendship so much?”

“Yes,” she said, “and Finn’s.”

Finn. Captain Storm. “Using his Christian name! Have a care, Miss Jakku. No one could imagine his by-blow to be mine.”

He could see that she did not understand for a moment, then struggled for composure, that temper beginning to win out; but luckily just at that moment Mordred decided to unbend and gave her knuckle a considering lick. She took this as an invitation to run her hands over his narrow little face and velvet ears, an act which clearly girl and hound both enjoyed. Rather than responding to Mordred’s master she said “what a _good_ dog” and sank to her knees, better to commune with him.

As Mordred was still ensconced on Ren’s lap, this put her in rather closer proximity to his person than he had expected, and for a moment he had to close his eyes rather than focus on the affecting sight of Miss Rey Jakku’s delighted face, nestling infinitely close to his wool-clad thigh. It was not _him_ she cosseted, he reminded himself, she hated _him_ ; it was Mordred, the traitor!

“Have you thought about all of marriage, Miss Jakku?” he said, irresistibly pulled to needle her, to tip her over into a rage. He knew she did not consent to wed out of love; he did not expect her love; for all she made light of the Dark Duke she must think him a very demon for killing his father; but by God he would have her passion, even if that passion was hate. “Have you thought about the wedding bed? —excuse me, I am indiscreet. But the duchy must have an heir. And you are a downy one, are you not? With your upbringing, surely you must not be wholly innocent of what will be required of you?”

But Ren’s hopes for an outburst were utterly dashed. “Of course,” she said serenely, somehow far less discomfited than she had been when he mentioned Captain Storm. “I intend to discharge all my duties to Alderaan, sir.” She stood. “I trust that you will call upon Lady Leia to make the arrangements. I would not know where to begin.”

“An announcement in the _Times,_ I believe, is the convention,” he said. “But wait. What sort of an engagement can it be with no tender words?”

She laughed. It was not bitter, and that made it worse somehow. “You can hardly think I care for you, my lord,” she said. “I have only just finished telling you that my feelings are rational.”

He stood, ruthlessly banishing Mordred to the floor, and enjoyed how she craned back to look up at him. “Rational! There is not a rational thought in your head, I dare say. If I am the Dark Duke, and Mordred is my hellhound, then I ought to punish you for intruding on my meditations, like—” He clasped her tiny waist and kissed her soundly.        

Passion he had wanted, and passion he got, at least for a moment, but it was all on his side. She was pliant but not forthcoming. It was maddening. He had not misjudged her, he would swear; he knew a woman struggling with her feelings when he saw it; but she would not give the slightest hint. Those sweet rosebud lips did not part a millimeter; she stood still as a statue, then slipped from his embraces the instant he loosened his grip.

“I ought to have expected to be mauled about,” she said primly, “but I will have no more of it until the wedding. Good night, my lord—I will be at home tomorrow.”

* * *

It was astonishing, Rey reflected, that anyone had ever found Lord Alderaan intimidating.

Oh, for a moment she had been taken in by his style—the faded splendor of his home, the austere coat removed to better permit her to appreciate the pitch-black inexpressibles and the fact that his broad shoulders needed no padding. She had thought that perhaps she had misjudged him, that perhaps he was every bit as dangerous as his reputation had it, that he was a heartless murderer. She had felt a flutter of anxiety when she saw he had been drinking strong liquor, a practise which she knew rendered some men violent. But then he had called his dog Mordred and she could only think that he _surely_ knew he was a parody of a Gothic villain.

He had wanted her to react to him, though. When one attempt had failed, he had made another and another, and she had to admit he had almost succeeded, until she had understood that it was all on purpose. A conniver he might be, a murderer, and incapable of love, perhaps, but he was not cold-blooded. It was possible to embarrass him, to make him uneasy, to shock him even.

This chain of thought led her naturally to his final throw, that impertinent and ridiculous kiss, but she shied away from the memory. There was no need to relive it; the feeling of his hands curling about her waist as they had in the waltz at Almack’s was irrelevant to the situation; the curious sensation of butterflies in the pit of her stomach meant only that her body was young and healthy and probably needed more exercise than it was getting in Town; if she now knew what those full lips felt like on her rather thinner ones, it was of no more significance than the softness of Mordred’s ears. Perhaps rather less—she thought that she would likely touch Mordred more frequently than Lord Alderaan.

Certainly it was nothing that need be recounted to Auntie Leia.

But that redoubtable dowager could not be put off. When Rey alit from the carriage, she had no real hope that her absence had not been reported to the mistress of the house, but she had not expected to be called up to Leia’s boudoir on the instant.

Leia was ensconced on her sofa, a cunning lap-desk allowing her to work at her ease, though she was presently engaged in mending a pen. She wore half-moon spectacles, for despite a prodigious number of candles the light was poor, and she peered over them to inspect Rey most critically upon her entrance.

“Well,” Leia said, “I suppose you will tell me you are engaged to be married?”

It was not precisely surprising that she had guessed, for she was a keener observer of humans than anyone Rey had ever known: “Yes,” was all Rey could say, and sat herself down on the carpet, permitting Gary to investigate the strange Mordred-scent that obviously clung to her dress and hands.

“I will say one thing for you: you are not at all romantic, which should stand you in very good stead as you try to manage my son. I suppose you will tell me that you do it all for Finn? —you might simply marry _him,_ you know. It would be easier.” She raised her hands as if in surrender at Rey’s protests. “No, no, I know what you will say. It would not answer; he is in love with Miss Tico; in any case it would in no way improve dear Amilyn’s relationship with Lady Snoke, which you have tried to its limits.”

“I am glad,” Rey said, “that you can enter into my feelings on the matter.”

“Oh, no, no! I cannot imagine your feelings, for Ben is my son.”

“Do you mean that you do not deplore this necessity?” Rey asked, surprised. “I had made sure—that is, he murdered your husband. His father. I would have thought you would regard him as the very devil—”

Leia shook her head, slowly, as though to gently clear cobwebs from it. “He is my son,” she said. “None of his actions can change that; I wish him happy, even if he has made me sad.”

“But _murder_!” Rey was shocked, and shocked again when she realized it was her fiancé of whom she spoke. Her decision to marry him had seemed so clear when she thought of Rose and Finn; it had seemed clear when she sparred with Lord Alderaan. Now she found her mind turning again, and turning away from him, and second-guessed her choice.

“So you have walked into Hell itself for your friends’ sake? Do you believe him utterly lost, not to propriety but to fellow-feeling? Is he a monster in human form?” Leia set her lap-desk aside, invited Gary to lumber up into her lap in its place. “Reach me the letter in the top right pigeon-hole, dearest.”

Rey went to the case that held Leia’s correspondence, found the letter; she took it to Leia, who refused it, saying, “you should know what took place that morning between my son and his father.”

It was ill-written, poorly blotted, crossed twice. The author did not seem to have a great command of English, for more than once Rey puzzled over the grammar of a sentence, only to discover that the verb was not at all where it ought to be. And yet…

“Is this true, ma’am?” she asked, astonished.

“Were you there? Was I? I cannot speak to it, nor can anyone but those present at the meeting. But I would trust Mr. Chewbacca for the truth.”

Rey read the letter again, faster this time. It recounted the events of the fateful morning rather differently than she had imagined: there had been no quarrel before the meeting at all; Mr. Solo had imagined that the practise of manly sport, always his strong point, might serve as a bridge between him and his top-lofty son; they met cordially near Mr. Solo’s rooms and went several rounds with fists, Mr. Chewbacca and Lord Hux taking part as well. Then they turned to fencing, and yes, there was a quarrel, but then no duel, only a sabre breaking in the heat of the match, a piece of bad luck which led to Mr. Solo’s death. There had been hard words spoken, which Mr. Chewbacca greatly regretted.

“But Aunt,” Rey protested, “no other person has said that it was an accident.”

“ _All_ other persons say it was,” Leia corrected her. “Is that not the story that was put about? An accident with sabers?”

“Well, that is the story they tell,” Rey acknowledged, “but Mr. Hux came to you and said it was a duel—the world knows your son as his father’s murderer—”

“He seems content to let them think so,” Leia said. “He has long imagined himself the villain of some story.”

“And perhaps Mr. Chewbacca is content to let _you_ think he is _not,_ when in truth it _was_ a duel!”

“Chewie? No. I have known him as long as I knew Mr. Solo; he has many faults, but he is not false, or in any case a great deal less false than Han—than most men.”

“I do not know him; I cannot judge his honesty, but please, Aunt, consider it—!”

Leia gazed steadily at her, petting Gary’s ears. Her gestures were like Lord Alderaan’s. “You are very determined to think the worst of your affianced husband,” she said. “You might consider that even if he _is_ a murderer, you will not add very greatly to your happiness through such an attitude. Unless you intend to cry off.”

“You cannot mean it!”

“I can and I do,” Leia said. “Rey. It has taken me many years to learn this lesson: the truth has many sides. Even now I hope that with the smallest move in one direction or another, I may convince my son to see the world my way.”

“And I should endeavor to see the world his way? His grasping, pompous—”

Leia’s stopped Rey’s tirade with a soft hand on hers. “I do not suggest that you lose yourself,” she said. “Enough of your money is protected that, should he ever become intolerable, you may leave, whenever you wish. You will go to Alderaan with trusted retainers, who will help you. I would not like to see you fall under the spell of Eustacia Snoke. But you will have to live with him for a little while at least.”

The fire crackled in the silence.

“Well,” Rey said, “I have made my bed now; I must lie in it.”

“Only do not ask me to explain what occurs in marriage-beds to you,” Auntie Leia said, suddenly jocular. “Given Ben’s participation, I do not think I could cope.”

* * *

As for my Lord of Alderaan, in the morning he dressed in his habitual sober blacks and went first not to pay a call on his fiancée but on his mentor, Lady Snoke, seeking to reach her before her _formal_ callers began to present themselves.

Her house seemed to him to be built on an inhuman scale—an effect he was sure she had intended. The ceilings were simply too high, the rooms either narrow and claustrophobic or vast and echoing. Her morning-room was furnished in an impeccable style, Egyptian relics never crossing over into vulgarity; yet the great obsidian statues of Anubis that kept watch in the corners of the room seemed to eye visitors hungrily, for all they were dead stone.

Lady Snoke greeted the intelligence that Ren was engaged to be married to Miss Jakku with undisguised pleasure. She had hoped to bring the connection about; since the reading of his uncle’s Will she had known how it should be, despite Miss Jakku’s low and ungenteel origins! “But,” she said, “now your trials begin, eh, boy?”

He had never entirely gotten used to her habit of calling him _boy_ ; it reminded him of the way his father had addressed him as “boy,” when they were on board ship, and how Mr. Chewbacca could never wrap his clumsy foreign tongue around the syllable, so it always sounded more like “roi.” Then his father had laughed about _little prince Ben, eh, isn’t being a Duke enough for you!_ And that—that was a memory he did not care to consider, in Lady Snoke’s morning-room.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure?” Ren said, in order to cover his confusion.

It was impossible for Lady Snoke to do something as ungenteel as sneer, but she was close to it. “You will never repent of it. You will order your life just as you like, after you set up your nursery. But that you must do early: your mother will never give you good advice on marriage, but you must know that if you do not break her to the saddle when first you are wed, she will never be tractable.”

“Are we speaking of Miss Jakku, or of my new roan?”

“If your roan is not already broken to saddle then you have been robbed of your money,” Lady Snoke said, not missing a beat.

Ren was silent. He knew Lady Snoke’s attitudes towards marriage: he had heard them often and often, as seasons had passed and each new crop of girls were wed. He had heard them even with regard to his own mother, and his father, and had been struck by their essential correctness: the family can have only one head, and that is the man, as enshrined in law and custom. Miss Jakku intended to take advantage of custom, marrying him to regain her social standing, to be covered by the protection of his name. Well, then she must play her role as well, and submit to him graciously.

Still, _tractable_ was not a word he would have used to describe the Incomparable, and he harbored serious doubts that that would change merely by an exchange of vows.

Lady Snoke took his silence as assent. “I say to you, set up your nursery early, because that will settle her quickest,” she continued. “It will also allow you to leave her soonest, as I cannot imagine you will wish to rusticate yourself with such a girl. Once she has produced an heir, there will be no need for her to be seen much in society; if she still persists with her steam-engines and her scientific pursuits, _let_ her be a bluestocking. Or perhaps she will not survive her confinement; she is a slip of a thing! Only, if she bears a girl, do not let her raise it; she would quite ruin it. Send it to me instead.”

Snoke’s eyes were narrow, calm, and quite, quite reptilian. Ren weighed her words, trying to remain dispassionate. Snoke was likely right: Miss Jakku was small, her hips slim, she might well find childbirth impossible. If she did bear a healthy child, she could not be trusted as a role model, no matter how settled she might become. Her manners might please gentlemen looking for a wife, but they were not in any way perfect. And the child it were a girl it would be twice as important that she be raised to perfection. And yet...

“We are rather ahead of ourselves, ma’am,” he said, keeping his tone light. “The wedding first.”

* * *

In the next weeks Rey formed an even more cynical view of Society than she already held.

It was amazing the number of calling-cards she received, not now from gentlemen but from ladies. Oh, one or two withheld their friendship—she heard them whispering behind their hands as she passed, realized that they were gossiping about how the Incomparable positively set snares for the Duke of Alderaan, and if _that_ was how one became engaged then they were _proud_ to remain unattached. But these were a small minority. Even Lady Carise Sindian came to Lady Leia’s morning-room to make nice.

Among the well-wishers and (Rey was not too polite to say) lickspittles were Mrs. Tico and Rose. They did not wait to find out if Rey was at home to them, only leaving a card. Rey was sorry they felt so wrong-footed, for she had long ago decided that she blamed neither of them one whit. Well, perhaps she blamed Mrs. Tico a _very_ little bit for not seeing Finn’s worth, but she could not pretend innocence to the circumstances behind their behavior..

When Rey came to call, Mrs. Tico was excessively apologetic, and full of Banbury tales: she and Rose had not recognized Rey at Almack’s at all, her hairstyle being _so_ different than its usual, and they had not realized they had cut her so flatly until days later, when Countess Holdo conveyed Rey’s distress to them. Not for the world would they have offended so dear a friend…!

Rose stayed very, very still as her mother spoke, and Rey knew she was mortified. She had always tried to keep Rey away from the house her mother had let, which was not in the most fashionable part of town, and now sitting in a small and somewhat dingy room on small and somewhat dingy furniture she seemed reduced in stature and vivacity herself.

“Mrs. Tico,” Rey said, “I perfectly understand why I was not known to you at Almack’s, and why you recognize me now; pray let us not speak more on the subject. I realize it is a most unfashionable hour, but I was hoping that Rose might come for a ride in the Park with me…? I have brought my groom, and I believe it is quite safe.”

Mrs. Tico had not commented on Rey’s riding habit before, though she must have noticed it and thought it strange that anyone would pay a call dressed in such a way; now, however, she declared that the gown was most cunningly made, that she was sure Rey was always in the very first stare of fashion, and that Rose would be delighted to go for a ride.

Rose was mounted on the next thing to a plough-horse; her family could not afford or did not care to invest in better. Fortunately Rey had borrowed her mount from Lady Leia, and it was by no means a prime goer, so they went along tolerably well-matched. Still it was an awkward and quiet ride until they both spoke at once:

“I do not blame you—”

“I am so dreadfully sorry—”

They caught each other’s eyes, ducked their heads, and finally laughed, and soon their conversation was nearly as easy as it had ever been, although they both steadfastly avoided the topic of matrimony.

The ride was very long, their horses being very slow, but eventually they approached Rose’s house again. She had been looking uneasy for nearly twenty minutes and had grown rather quiet, but it was not until they were in sight of the house that she pulled up and said, “Rey, you once said that you considered me a sister. Was that true?”

“Very true,” Rey said.

“Then you must let me speak to you as a sister would and ask—no, plead—that you cry off.”

Rose was staring straight ahead, not daring to look at Rey, her eyes suddenly brimful with tears. Rey opened her mouth to respond, but shut it again. What could she say? She knew the reasons Rose would tell her. She had thought of most of them herself. And she would not, could not tell Rose that her whole purpose in marriage was to come into a position where she might further Finn’s suit. She was sure Rose and Finn loved each other, but he had not formally paid his addresses to Rose; Rey could hardly speak of it when he had not.

“I do not intend to cry off,” Rey finally said.

“Are you sure? Are you very sure?”

“As sure as may be,” Rey said.

“Because,” Rose said, and turned to look at Rey, a tear spilling down her cheek, “if you cannot resist it, then who can?”

_It_ : the ton, the expectations, everything Rose was subject to. Rey felt Rose’s disappointment keenly, but remained tongue-tied.

“You have the money,” Rose continued. “You have the mind; you have never been constrained the way I am, the way my sister was; your guardian would not care if you ruined yourself fifty times over; and yet you subject yourself to a murderer for the sake of your good name. I know well why you would do it! But I had a fantasy, I suppose, that you were immune.”

Rey saw herself from the outside, then, through Rose’s eyes. She must seem to live a charmed life, coming from romantically poor circumstances, raised to be next-thing-to-nobility through the good offices of the White Knight Luke Skywalker, gifted with a fortune upon his death, hailed as Incomparable by the Pinks of the ton. A girl constrained by her family’s lack of money and position might well imagine that life would be simple for Rey, that her choices would be straightforward.

To make it worse, Rose was right. Rey ought not to be engaged to Lord Alderaan. And yet.

“I am not immune,” Rey sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thank yous to R.J. Anderson, who's joined the beta team as of this chapter, and her new indie band, "Pitch-Black Inexpressibles"!
> 
>   
>   
> Illustration by [Proporgo](http://proporgo.tumblr.com)...of Rose and Rey in happier days!


	8. Chapter 8

The period of suspense before Rey’s wedding was shorter than she had initially imagined it might be. There was little time for Lieutenant Dameron and Captain Storm to (in stages) make jokes about the situation, try to talk her out of it, try to give her very serious advice, then retreat to jokes again; there was only one uncomfortable interview in which Rey found herself weeping as she asked Finn to please, _please_ simply stand by her as she did what she had decided she must do.

If Lord Alderaan had been left to his own devices, they would have been married by special license as few days after Rey accepted his suit as he could manage it. Even for a Duke it took some time and money to procure a license, and once it had been done there was yet the bride-clothes to bespeak and the church to secure. These niceties might have been dispensed with, but Lady Leia put her foot down, backed by Countess Holdo: if Rey were to be married, she would be married properly, and none of this havey-cavey nonsense. “It is impossible that you should be married like a girl with no family and no portion,” Leia said, “if your reasons are all social. It shall have to be St. George’s Hanover Square.”

“Still, if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere best done quickly,” Countess Holdo said, conceding to Rey’s desire to be finished with the whole matter. When the countess’s guard was down she had a way of knowing just the quotation to fit the moment: Rey supposed she hid it out of long practice, for fear of being considered as much a bluestocking as Leia.

It was not until after the notice of betrothal had been sent to the _Times_ and the _Courier_ that Rey finally had the opportunity to speak with Lieutenant Dameron tête-à-tête. She had been longing to do so, but he had managed to avoid her, or to ensure that Finn were with him, so that she could not express herself fully.

Finally she cornered him at a ball given by Lady —. “Oh, Lieutenant Dameron!” she caroled. “I realise that I am promised to you for this set, but would you be so kind as to walk me on the terrace instead? It is so _dreadfully_ hot in this crush!”

As she had spoken within earshot of full five of his friends, Lieutenant Dameron could not but obey her wishes, though he had not asked her to dance at all: they reached the terrace with a rather tense silence between them.

A quick glance convinced Rey that, while they were respectably visible from the ballroom, there could be no chance of another couple overhearing what she had to say. “You are an idiot,” she said, “and I am half convinced that you meant dear Finn ill.”

“No!” Dameron’s expression was almost comically anxious. “No—you cannot believe that.”

She did not, really, but he deserved any anxiety he felt. She taxed him: “Did you think Miss Tico would fall into your arms instead of Finn’s? You think very little of her loyalty, in that case.”

“You know I am not a schemer!” Dameron said, as he obviously struggled to work out in his head what he thought _she_ thought his deep game was. “Lord, I never imagined it would go so ill! Who’d have thought Storm wouldn’t be dressed for Almack’s?”

“Anyone who spent more than half a second thinking! How could he know? I never told him—I never dreamed he would seek to go there without me! And you looked at him, didn’t you? It never occurred to you to say ‘hold up, old sport, better go change those pantaloons, they won’t do for Almack’s’?”

“Who thinks of things like that? He looked fine to me. If the Patronesses don’t like it they can go hang—everyone says so,” Dameron said. For all he was older than Rey she thought he sounded petulant. She was silent. “Well—perhaps Almack’s means more to Storm than it does to me,” he admitted, after a time.

“It does, and since you have refused to be alone with me since I became betrothed to Lord Alderaan, I dare say you know that I have done so to fix _your_ mistakes,” Rey said, not quite fairly: Rose and Finn’s romance was none of Dameron’s doing. “Someday soon I shall be able to help Finn back into polite society, but not perhaps for several months after the wedding. I believe we will spend the autumn at Duke’s Alderaan. So in the meantime, Lieutenant Dameron, I depend upon you not to plunge Finn further into disreputable doings—do you understand?”

The Lieutenant’s demeanor had softened at the mention of Rey’s marriage, and he turned to her and clasped her hands in his. “I do promise,” he said, his handsome dark eyes serious. “And you must promise to call on me if you need help—any help. I cannot promise I won’t go to sea; but if I am on land, call me and I’ll come.”

It was a gallant offer, and Rey was grateful.

“She will need no help from you, Dameron,” came a voice: Rey’s fiancé, glowering down at them both. “Release her, please; you are touching something that is not yours.”

He was jealous, Rey realized; jealous, and treating her like an object, a toy he didn’t want to share. Lieutenant Dameron knew better than to rise to his bait. “She is not yours until the wedding, Ren,” he said lightly, and she remembered that they had surely been at Eton or Harrow together. “But I wish you joy.” He excused himself with a bow.

Lord Alderaan offered Rey his arm, and she took it, not seeing how she might decline; he led her slowly up and down the terrace in silence. After a time he stopped and addressed himself to her. “I will not require you to cut Lieutenant Dameron when we are married,” he said.

Rey was stunned at the thought. “I am glad you do not intend to require it; I would not comply,” she said.

“That is why I will not require it,” he said.

It was surely a sign that she was going mad that she felt gratitude for this pronouncement.

* * *

The wedding day approached. There was no family to come from the countryside; Rey had no bridesmaids, though Captain Storm attended the ceremony to support her, blindingly handsome in his regimentals. Freed now from sprig muslin, she wore a blue dress that set off her chestnut hair to perfection. For a moment, looking in the mirror, she could imagine herself on the way to marry… what? Who?

None of her beaux attracted her. She could not imagine marrying one of the young men back at Ahch-To Hall. The only person she had ever given serious thought to marrying was Lord Alderaan. Was that not a twisted joke?

She did not allow her doubts to surface at any point in the short ceremony, not even when the parson informed them that marriage was ordained for “the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity,” which she did not expect in the least, nor when she was requested to vow that she would “obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in sickness and in health,” at least half of which she did not intend to do.

In honesty she had to admit that she felt a kind of anxiety when Lord Alderaan said “I Benjamin Kylo Skywalker Organa take thee Rey,” for she had never heard his given name on his own lips before; but she managed to reply that “I Rey take thee Benjamin” without an audible stumble.

And, truth be told, she could not help but look at him rather than keep her eyes cast modestly down when he produced the ring—a gold circle that seemed a slender thing indeed to bind her for ever. She looked into his face as he uttered the words “with this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship,” and for a moment thought of nothing but his body, the powerful body that had killed his father either in malice or by accident, and yet that was so strangely magnetic, so well-formed in his fine-cut coats.

She looked into his face as he said “with all my worldly goods I thee endow,” and thought of how her fortune would now in large part be his—enough remained in trust to keep her in tolerable comfort for the rest of her days, but not enough for her to live _fashionably_ should she leave his protection against his will. Did he understand what she was giving up? She thought he might; she thought he might understand but not care.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” he said, and fitted the ring around her finger, and it was done, despite all the psalms and the prayers to come.

“Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them,”  the priest adjured in his sermon, yet also “Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the Word, they also may without the Word be won by the conversation of the wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.”

The priest was an older man, and Rey did not know if he was married, but she wondered what he should say if she told him the whole, and confessed that Lady Leia rather _hoped_ that her son would be converted by his wife, not to Christianity but to Christian feeling towards his fellow man; and that she had no expectation of so converting him but only the hope that he would get a child on her and leave her alone.

But if she said that then she would be lying to a priest, for she did not know what she felt. Revulsion—sometimes. When she was in a bad mood, or when she thought that Mr. Chewbacca must have been lying, or when Lady Leia seemed saddest that her son would not respect her as a son ought to respect his mother. But attraction—some other times. When she had seen him petting Mordred, his big hands caressing those small soft ears with such infinite care and kindness. Could a person capable of that love be capable of evil?

She knew he could; she had seen it.

* * *

The wedding breakfast was too short for Rey’s liking. For once she had no appetite, but forced herself to eat. They would have a long journey in many stages, and did not expect to arrive at Takodana (where lodging had been arranged at an inn) until very late.

She did not realize until it was time to leave that they would be traveling in the great black coach with the arms of the Duke of Alderaan on its side. Much of her luggage had been sent ahead, to be ready for her at their destination; she had only a band-box and a few parcels, and they were already loaded.

“All will be well,” Lady Leia whispered in Rey’s ear, as they embraced at the coach’s door. “And remember what I told you about Duke’s Alderaan!”

There was no time for more sentimental good-byes; Lord Alderaan handed her in. “Mother,” he said by way of farewell, as he moved to enter himself; but Leia seized him and kissed him soundly on each cheek.

“She will be the making of you, if you treat her with honor,” Leia said. “You won’t listen to me; but I am your mother and I must try to advise you.”

“I am much obliged to you, ma’am,” the Duke said, with icy stiffness, and swung up into the vehicle.

Neither of the newlyweds spoke until they were well out of London. Rey had tucked herself up into a corner of the carriage, staring out the window; her new husband took the opposite corner, keeping his long legs folded close to his seat, so as not to encroach upon her.

Rey had seen the coaching-inns at work when she came to London, so she was not entirely surprised when their first change of horses took only a few minutes, but the short break in the journey was enough to rouse her from her reverie. Looking across to the other seat, she saw Lord Alderaan breathing slowly, as though he were ill.

Suddenly she recalled that, when he had come to Ahch-To Hall, he had ridden part of the way. He must be prone to carriage-sickness, and she knew from experience that it was made infinitely worse if one was obliged to ride in the backwards-facing seat. How long had he been suffering? Since they left the wedding breakfast, she supposed.

“It is stupid to torture yourself,” she said, breaking the silence. “If you wish to ride your horse, you have my blessing to do it.”

He looked up, surprised.

“You are ill, my lord.”

“It is nothing.”

Rey shrugged. “Suit yourself. You needn’t ride backwards, at least; you may sit by me.”

She looked away before she could see his reaction, but after a very few minutes he switched seats. There was more than enough space in the enormous traveling-coach for them to sit without touching, yet even so, to travel facing the same direction felt dangerously intimate.

“You need not call me ‘my lord,’” Alderaan said, an hour later.

He had not turned to Rey, and he held himself carefully still, though he looked marginally less nauseated.

She considered the problem of names.

She had signed the parish register at St. George’s Hanover Square with the name she had used since coming to live with Luke: Miss Rey Jakku. Her signature had looked loopingly elegant beneath her new husband’s small, cramped mark. But she was not Miss Rey Jakku anymore. Her name might have been given to her late, might have represented the institution where she was raised rather than the family from which she sprang, but it had been hers for years, and now it was gone.

Instead, she was Rey, Duchess of Alderaan. She had no family name any more; no one would refer to her as “Mrs. Solo.” She was a ladyship. A ‘Her Grace.’

But it was not Rey’s name at issue. “I believe it is still proper for me to refer to you that way,” she said. “I am not wholly ignorant of etiquette.”

“In private,” he said, “you need not.”

She knew that her part was to say, “then what am I to call you?” She did not oblige. She did not want to ask for more intimacy.

“You may call me by my Christian name,” he said, not letting the issue go.

“Or a nickname even?” Rey asked. “Shall I call you ‘Ren’ as your friends do? How does ‘Benji’ sound?”

He looked appalled. “Does my mother call me that?”

“No,” Rey admitted.

“I do not like the name ‘Benjamin,’” he said. “I hoped that you would call me ‘Kylo.’ It is my second name.”

To Rey’s ears ‘Kylo’ sounded vaguely ridiculous, certainly worse than ‘Benjamin’ or even ‘Ben’ or ‘Benji.’ Why would he chuse it? Was she the only one who would call him by it? Lady Leia called him ‘Ben.’  And of course she knew it was his second name: he had said as much at their wedding. But she only said, “as you wish.”

After a moment of quiet, he offered, “You must be wondering why.”

“No, my lord,” she said. “Your name is your business.”

“My relations with my family are poor,” he said. “At changes in life, people take new names. You have just done so. The greatest change in my life until now was parting ways with my parents; so I determined to be called by a new name.”

Rey could not feel that this was sensible, but she nodded acknowledgment. They stared out the windows again, watching the bucolic country fly by.

Some time later he said, “May I call you ‘Rey’?”

It was the first time she had heard her name on his lips outside the bounds of the marriage ceremony. He said it softly, and if she had thought he were capable of reverence she would have said reverently—but that could not be.

“I am your wife,” she said, “you may call me what you will.”

She believed that would be the end of it; but reaching across the invisible barrier between them he took her hand where it lay in her lap, and clasped it, and said, “I am glad.”

Then he looked away again.

Lord Alderaan’s face was long and lean, but his hands were wide, blunt-fingered, though not unelegant. They were much softer than Rey’s, even after she had been idle for months, and even though he was reckoned a famous sportsman; they were much larger, too. Her fingers were enveloped in his.

She was exquisitely aware of the sensation for what seemed like hours, until they reached the next stage.

* * *

They were delayed by an overturned wagon around five o’clock, and did not arrive at the inn where they were to spend the night until well after dark. It was a great relief to Rey to be handed down out of the carriage and to stretch her legs; she could only imagine that Alderaan felt the same.

They had been reserved two rooms, and a private sitting room, in which they took supper. It was indifferent good, but Rey hardly noticed: she had never been particular about such things. Soon they were finished, and Alderaan announced his intention to go to the common room for a while, for a change of scene.

Bebe had been sent on ahead to Duke’s Alderaan with the greater part of Rey’s wardrobe and His Grace’s valet; Rey was therefore left quite alone to undress herself, brush out her hair, and prepare for whatever might come.

She had not provided herself with pretty underthings, or night-rails intended to please; the purpose of her marriage was not seduction, and she did not care whether Lord Alderaan found her beautiful or not. Therefore it was the work of very few moments to change and prepare herself for bed. For a moment, she considered setting rag-curls in the locks at her temples: if she were not attempting to make herself attractive, why should she forego such an important part of her nightly toilette? Something stopped her, however: perhaps she was vain, but she could not quite see her way clear to appearing _completely_ dowdy on her wedding night.

She had no way to know when her husband planned to return; he had not revealed his intentions to her. She sat up as long as she could keep her eyes open, reading _The Corsair_ ; but she had not gotten much past the introduction of the title character before her eyes slipped closed.

All the night she tossed and turned, her dreams distressingly vivid and yet insubstantial. Wide-palmed hands caressed her; she was lifted to sit on the desk in Lady Leia’s library, and was feverishly kissed, then discovered that her lover’s face was not human at all but that of Mordred the dog. Lord Alderaan threw open the door and they were discovered—he shouted at her—and then—and then—and then she woke to the sound of the chambermaid busy about her morning tasks.

* * *

Breakfast was laid in their private parlor, and Alderaan had already partaken of it. He looked rather tired, with dark circles under his eyes, and was drinking coffee with no adulterants.

Rey’s rational mind told her to count her blessings that she had not been visited by His Grace; there would be time enough for that later. Or perhaps he did not intend to consummate the marriage? She should be thankful for that, if it were the case. Her rational mind instructed her to eat breakfast in silence, to keep the status quo.

But she was _curious_. She did not think that the man who had kissed her, that night that she had come to accept his offer, would settle for a marriage in name only; she did not think that the man who so coveted Baron Skywalker’s fortune would allow even the slightest doubt to be cast on the validity of their union; she did not think that the man who held himself so high-and-mighty would leave his Duchy without a Duke.

So. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I never do when I am away from home.”

“Is Duke’s Alderaan home, then?”

He toyed with his coffee cup’s handle. “No,” he said. “I spend little time there. London is home, or my hunting box at Melton.”

“Yet you bring your bride to Duke’s Alderaan.”

“It is the seat,” he said.

Rey tucked into her meal. Her husband watched her like a hawk, surely judging her manners and whether she was ladylike enough. In defiance she ate rather more than she wanted, and did not scruple to mop egg-yolk from her plate with a scrap of bread. Let him think her a savage!

She did not try to start a conversation again until she had been bestowed in the coach; today he took the seat next to her without hesitation. She wondered that he did not ride—it would surely be more pleasant, and she wished she might herself—but reflected that perhaps it did not suit his sense of dignity.

“I was surprised not to see you last night, my lord,” she said. “I had thought you would be in the common room but a little while.”

She was even more surprised to see color rush to his normally sallow cheeks. “I did not wish to begin our married life at an inn,” he said. “It is not—fitting.”

Rey did not know what to say to this piece of information. Should she tax him for not explaining himself? No—if marriage did not entitle him to share in her thoughts, she could not expect him to open his mind to her. Therefore she made no response.

Her thoughts, however, were unsettled. He could not have delayed his duty for Rey’s sake. Then was he such a snob that he could not sleep except on silk sheets and his own feather bed? Did he worship his ancestors so much that he insisted on conceiving an heir in the ducal chambers at Duke’s Alderaan and nowhere else? It would be an irony if he did, as none of the blood of the Dukes of Alderaan flowed in his veins: he was a Skywalker and a Solo, not an Organa.

Or perhaps Rey’s person was objectionable to him? He had never _said_ he admired her. He had kissed her, it was true, and she had put a great deal of stock in this, but he had been trying to needle her into a reaction: perhaps it was only a tactic. Perhaps he was truly disgusted by her low birth, or found dark-haired women not to his taste, or…

She was disturbed to realize that she was coming perilously close to caring what Lord Alderaan thought of her.

At the next coaching inn, she asked him to kindly get out of the coach and ride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wedding ceremony is more or less as it would have been—it's directly from the Book of Common Prayer. There were no kisses at Regency weddings, so Rey didn't have to face her very mixed feelings on the subject immediately!


	9. Chapter 9

When Rey learned that she would be taken to Duke’s Alderaan, she had asked Leia for intelligence on the place: its size, position, its grounds, its tenants and staff. She had learned that on the way to the great manor they would pass through Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise, attendant villages; that the park was twelve hundred acres and had been designed by Capability Brown and left nearly unchanged since; that the housekeeper’s name was Mrs. Dodd and that she was not to be indulged. She had learned about the problems with drainage and the ridiculous age of the tenants’ houses.

None of this knowledge prepared her for the reality.

They were met at their final stage by a colorless young man driving an ancient barouche and were obliged to shift into it. Rey did not understand why, at first: the traveling-coach had been much better sprung and more comfortable, and better-kept too. This new conveyance had once been gilded, like Cinderella’s carriage, but the gilding had peeled and been only poorly mended.

It was a pleasant change to be in an open carriage, however, and the reason for it became apparent when the horses began to labor up a grade to Alderaan Rise. The village was a little thing, shabby, though pleasantly sited on a hill, and Rey did not think much of it until she saw that its inhabitants were rushing out of the doors to greet the Duke and his new Duchess. They would have been sorely disappointed had the travelers stayed in the enclosed coach; the barouche permitted all a good view.

She did not know what to do in response to such an outpouring. Alderaan stayed stiff and still as ever, his face immobile, but Rey could not refuse to wave. The people were as shabby and patched as their village, though very neatly pressed; they must have worn their Sunday best. Indeed, it was very like a Sunday: the colorless young man pulled the horses up at the steps of the church, and the rector came down to bow to His Grace and bestow his blessings upon the new Lady Alderaan. A line of tattered children stared, and the woman in charge of them led them in a cheer.

“We ought to have had something for them,” Rey said, as they pulled away. “Sweets for the little ones—pennies—something.”

Alderaan cocked his head. “Are you so impatient to play Lady Bountiful?”

This was unfair. “No,” Rey said, “but they came out to see us—and the children were expecting something; did you see their faces?”

“I did not,” he said. But a half-hour later, as the carriage entered Alderaan Dean and another crowd of tenants gathered, she saw him looking.

Alderaan Dean had the taller steeple and the more self-important rector; its steps were better-swept and its roof better-kept than the church at Alderaan Rise, but its parishioners were no better off. Rey heard the rector’s name as Fanshaw (she was not to learn for several days that it was spelt ‘Featherstonehaugh’ and was forever correcting herself thereafter) and he was not nearly as ingratiating to Lord Alderaan. “Now that you are home, we may hope to see better days,” he said, and Rey felt that he was speaking to her as much as to her husband. “It has been too, too long. I shall look forward to your attendance on Sunday.”

Lord Alderaan’s haughty stare was enough to make Rey squirm with embarrassment, though whether embarrassment at the rector’s impertinence or her husband’s pride she was herself unsure. “Do not think me an entirely changed man, Featherstonehaugh,” he said. “Expect nothing from this quarter.”

From this interaction Rey learned that her husband was not a religious man—if she had not already known it.

* * *

It could not be a surprise to Rey that Lord Alderaan had been neglectful. She had been told as much by every one, and she knew that his circumstances were straitened enough to prevent any serious improvement to his land. Nor did she find it shocking that a young man, plunged into town life, might disdain the comforts of the church. In many ways, she found it a relief to discover that Lord Alderaan was the man she thought he was: somewhat selfish, haughty, uninterested in the lot of those whose livelihoods he controlled, incurious about the changes in public health, in farming, and in manufacture that had taken place in his lifetime.

What she was  _ not _ prepared for was her first sight of Duke’s Alderaan.

The road out of Alderaan Dean was thickly planted with trees and hedges. Capability Brown’s design had grown to maturity in the fifty years since it was laid down, and so their way wound through darkly-shaded tunnels and suddenly came out into bright forest meadows; they nearly circumnavigated a small pond, in which ducks were a-swim; this late in the summer the flowers were past their prime blooms and lent a faded glory to the scene. Rey enjoyed the cool shadows and began to anticipate the surprises that would come around each turn.

She knew the final surprise would be the house itself, but she was unsure of how far they had come and uncertain when to expect it, so when they made their final turn onto the long graveled drive she blinked with astonishment. The forest fell away—all but a single line of trees that overhung the drive. Beyond them was a vast lawn, rolling down to the house itself, and the blue sky above it, cloudless and pure. Within this jeweled setting was a black smudge, as though someone had put a sooty finger on a painted landscape.

Duke’s Alderaan was burnt.

As the barouche approached Rey began to make out the details. The house had once been a massy rectangle, three tall ranks of windows covering the entire façade, topped with numerous cupolas and turrets. When it was new it must have been made of some pale stone, but a great conflagration had destroyed its beauty entire. Dark streaks marred it from top to bottom; part of the roof had fallen in, and one corner seemed to have crumbled from top down.

Rey became aware too that the grounds around the house were ill-kept—not entirely overgrown, but just this side of wild, as though beaten back from utter ruin by the work of too small a staff of gardeners. This circumstance only added to the pathos of the scene. The house seemed a destroyed temple to man’s ambition and folly amidst the rollicking greenness of Nature, and soon (she fancied) Nature would win and utterly tear down Duke’s Alderaan.

“The outbuildings, you will find, were untouched,” His Grace said without emotion, “but the ruin was not so complete as it seems from this vantage. There are still habitable rooms in the back of the house; that is where we will stay.”

All Rey could think was that Lady Leia had made fun of her for imagining herself a Gothic heroine—but Lady Leia must have known how Gothic Duke’s Alderaan had become!

It would not do to voice such thoughts, however, as the barouche eased its way around the fountain at the end of the long drive and pulled up in front of the house. There a small knot of people stood: not the hundred servants or more who must have been necessary to keep Duke’s Alderaan in its prime, but only ten.

“I suppose the rest of the staff is about their work?” Rey ventured.

“This is my staff,” Alderaan replied. “I require no more.”

He handed her down from the carriage in remote dignity, and introduced her to each of the ten in order: the steward Mr. Albemarle; the butler Wardle; Mrs. Dodd, the housekeeper; the groundskeeper and gameskeeper, Turnbull and Bullock, whose names Alderaan thought were a great joke; the cook, Mrs. Simple; a man-of-all-work, Santigo Milon, and his sister Anandra, a housemaid; and the general slavey, a girl known only as Bess. Added to these were his Grace’s valet and Rey’s abigail Bebe, having arrived the day before to prepare their stay; the colorless groom who had met them with the barouche made the number of servants an unlucky thirteen.

Rey matched their names, one by one, to Auntie Leia’s advice and recollections. She knew from both Leia’s warning and her own experience that befriending Mrs. Dodd was the most important task before her; still, she could not help but watch the steward Albemarle most closely. Leia had said that he was an old man and a tired one, without much gumption. Rey could well believe that, given the lamentable state of the villages through which they had passed, and the decay into which the grounds had fallen.

But what part did Albemarle play in the destruction of Duke’s Alderaan? Was he so ineffectual that he had simply let the place slide into rack and ruin? Rey was certain that her husband had mismanaged it terribly, but he had only been of age for ten years, and such decay could not have occurred in such a short time. Had Albemarle been fooling Leia somehow? He did not seem intelligent enough to fool anyone, but then, she reminded herself, she could not form an opinion of him from so slight an acquaintance.

She could not answer these questions immediately; His Grace suggested that she must be tired and wish to freshen up, and Bebe could not restrain herself from humming her approval. She was not led through the ruined front doors but along a path around the bulk of the house; the destruction was less here, and she could well believe that there were habitable rooms on the south-facing side, though how long they would remain so without serious renovations to the roof was another matter. The other side of the house let out onto formal gardens that had, at least in the region closest to the buildings, been relatively well-kept; and there were outbuildings, in which she supposed the servants must be housed, that seemed untouched by decay.

From the gardens Rey entered a pleasant parlor, well-aired and scrubbed free of smoke-damage, but where it communicated with the central courtyard she could see that many other rooms had been boarded up. She was obliged to mount to the upper floors on what must once have been a servants’ staircase, and found herself in a long gallery nearly denuded of art. Up one more flight, and through a series of smaller chambers, Mrs. Dodd showed her into her private sitting-room.

Rey could not entirely like this room; it was darkly paneled, and the furniture though undoubtedly historic was old, heavy, and uncomfortable, made of mahogany, upholstered with satin and broidered with strange old patterns. The windows that overlooked the garden were hung with heavy red velvet drapes that permitted little light to enter, though they were drawn back. She did not think she could ply a needle here, even at high noon. 

In the far wall were set two doors, and through the right-hand one was Rey’s bedchamber. The difference in style from the sitting room was as night and day. Here the windows had been hung with light muslin, allowing air to flow freely, and as it was set in the corner of the house there were windows on two sides. The furniture was somewhat simply made, but this was a virtue: there were no elaborate and ugly carvings to ruin the pale wood of the chairs and dressing table. If the walls had ever been hung with paper, they were not now, instead having been pristinely white-washed. The only ancient object in the room was the mirror above the dressing table, and it was a marvel: a silver disk in a baroque gold frame, somehow appearing more gorgeous in contrast to the simple room. A spray of yellow late-summer roses had been set in a cut-glass bowl to welcome her.

“It’s lovely!” Rey exclaimed, because she could not imagine a place designed more to her taste. “Mrs. Dodd, was this your idea?”

The housekeeper ducked her head. “Yes, Your Grace, mine and the girls’. Lady Leia wrote to tell us about you, and she said as you had no liking for frills and furbelows, as it were; so we thought to make over the room afore you came.”

“Where ever did you get this cunning bench?” Rey asked, running her hands over the object standing at the foot of the bed: it had been carved out of a single piece of wood, cushioned and covered with straw-colored brocade.

“Bullock made it years ago for the servants’ hall, and I covered it with a scrap from the Great Chamber as was—we finally lost the Great Chamber two years ago. Ceiling fell in; but no one was hurt, praise the Lord. I will tell him you admired it. He thought it might not be good enough for Her Grace, but I told him, what young lady wants these stinking old things around her?”

There was, perhaps, an argument in favor of ancient family heirlooms, but Rey did not feel competent to make it. She was too relieved to have her pretty, comfortable little bedchamber. She looked around it with great complaisance, her eyes passing the door to the sitting room and skittering over the other door, the door that surely led to His Grace’s chamber.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but I don’t think you can know the to-do we had here,” Mrs. Dodd continued, bustling about the room to make sure that Rey’s clothes had been correctly bestowed in the wardrobe and straightening the hairbrushes on the dressing table. That was trouble: Rey knew Bebe would resent the interference, and through the corner of her eye she could see her struggling to keep her temper, but there was nothing to be done about it. “We were all that excited to hear that the Young Master had married; and when Lady Leia wrote to say you were everything she had hoped, why, all we could think of was getting ready. And you are even more beautiful than she said! Begging your pardon, Your Grace.”

Rey could not help but laugh at this obsequiousness. “You don’t need to ‘Your Grace’ me,” she said. “Why, we are to work together, are we not? To collaborate on bringing Duke’s Alderaan back to its glory? Perhaps when other people are around you must keep up appearances—but surely you need not when we’re alone? You know I didn’t grow up as a lady; so you must call me Rey.”

Mrs. Dodd looked stunned, and a little distressed. “You must be tired, Your Grace,” she finally said. “I’ll leave you to rest—dinner will be served at four o’clock; we keep country hours here, though of course it may be changed to-morrow if you prefer.”

“Changed! Never think it, Mrs. Dodd; I shall not upset your rhythms,” Rey said. But she was beginning to think that perhaps the inhabitants of Duke’s Alderaan, not to mention Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise, were rather depending on her to upset their rhythms, and she did not yet know where she would begin.

* * *

 

Bebe was a font of intelligence about the rest of the servants, although (as she said) it was impossible to say if her impressions were correct, as no one would trust a fine French maid from Town until they had come to know her better. She called Mrs. Dodd an old tyrant, and declared that the Revolution would have guillotined her years ago, whereas Mr. Albemarle and Wardle were soft old men, easy to twine around one’s finger. She caused Bess to bring water for Rey’s bath, and dressed her for dinner in the sort of country clothes she might have worn at Ahch-To Hall: not the first stare of fashion, but practical and comfortable.

"Pas besoin de perdre du temps pour votre mari," Bebe sniffed. "Vous l'avez conquis, vous êtes déjà mariés, et il devrait savoir que vous n'avez pas l'intention d'être une gravure de mode."

Rey nearly confessed that while it was true that she had caught the Dark Duke, the marriage was  _ not _ complete—she was tolerably sure that Bebe would not spread this information to the other servants—but she felt a wash of embarrassment and remained silent.

Fortunately there were other things to be concerned with. Dinner was laid in a room that had clearly been used for something else, before most of the house burned; the silver was fine but the china and linens third-rate. They were only two at table, but it was crowded with dishes: Cook was expressing her pleasure at their marriage. The food was cooked well if plainly, served in two courses, and Rey was certain that the vegetables had been grown at home.

After the first course it began to be ridiculous that they had no conversation, and Rey was sure that Santigo (who was waiting at table) would find their silence absolutely fascinating. “I look forward to learning more about your home,” she essayed. “Is the kitchen garden to the east of the house?”

“No, to the west,” he said, and seemed not to want to say any more.

“I must admit I will struggle to remember all the names. Remind me of the rector at Alderaan Rise?”

“Reffe,” he said. “His installation was my grandfather’s last act.”

“Then you will have the living to bestow someday,” Rey said, “have you given it any thought?”

“No.”

There was silence again for a time. It was  _ enraging. _ Was this to be married life, then? Awkward meals and nothing to talk about?

“I suppose my fortune will be spent here,” Rey said, giving up all attempts to beat around the bush. “Where will you start?”

The Duke looked at her, this time, with interest. “Where ever did you get that idea?”

This boggled her. “We sit in a burnt-down house,” Rey said, “and you do not mean to spend my money fixing it? In a very few years these rooms will fall into ruin too. Mrs. Dodd told me that you ‘lost the Great Chamber a few years back’ —I suppose the roof is unsound even in the parts that were untouched by the fire?”

“In a very few years these rooms will fall into  _ picturesque _ ruin,” the Duke corrected her. “I see no reason why they should not.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. “You will build anew, then?”

“No time soon,” he said. “I do not prefer country life—except for hunting, of course.”

“Then why did you bring me here? Am I to live in the picturesque ruins?”

“No. You will live where you chuse, but it seemed that you should not be the Duchess of a place you had never seen.”

Rey set her utensils down and folded her hands in her lap. “Then we are not to stay.”

“Not for more than a fortnight, no.”

She thought of the cheering in the villages, the way Reffe had greeted them, and the expectations Featherstonehaugh had expressed; she thought of how Mrs. Dodd had prepared her room so carefully. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said.

Her new husband swirled the wine in his glass and drank.

* * *

Rey felt that half past four was too early for dinner simply because, afterwards, there were too many hours before supper and bed.

It was not that there was nothing for her to do. She had brought her needlework, of course, and then there was the house to learn and the grounds to explore; even the most dedicated walker would find twelve hundred acres a significant area over which to ramble. When these things paled, there would be the villages to see, and the tenants to visit, for Rey had no intention of neglecting Alderaan, whatever her husband said.

Though summer was waning, there was still light left, so Rey was able to explore the formal gardens. She found the kitchen garden the best-kept of any, bursting with vegetables. The hedge maze beyond it had not been cared for in many years, possibly since her husband’s grandfather had been alive. In places the branches had grown so tight together that she had to push her way through. 

It was satisfying  to exert herself for what felt like the first time in a very long time: in London she had frequently been tired, but tired from staying up late and drinking too many glasses of champagne, not tired from a full day of work. She enjoyed finding her way through the hedge maze the way she enjoyed fixing an engine: it taxed her both mentally and physically, and when she was trying to detangle herself from a creeping vine her too-loud mind could focus.

She had to acknowledge the truth: tonight she began her duties as a wife. She had read about them in books, had discussed them with the young women who lived near Ahch-To Hall, had even caught her old friend Mary once  _ in flagrante delicto _ with the stableboy: she might be a virgin, but she was well-armed. Therefore she must approach the matter with the same seriousness and consideration as she had decided to marry Lord Alderaan in the first place.

Pragmatically she began to think through the possible ways it might go. Very likely Lord Alderaan would come to her silently, in the dark, and complete his task silently, and then leave again. This did not seem likely to be romantic or satisfying—women did seem to find the act satisfying if it were done right, or women of the lower orders did, which meant that Rey probably would; after all she was not well-bred—but it would have the virtue of being rapid.

The other possibility was that he would consider her a toy whom he had bought, the next thing to a mistress; he would expect to use her as one. Rey was not as clear on this part of the world, for she had never met a demimondaine before she came to London; when she finally did, she had been required to keep some distance, for (as Leia and Holdo both firmly declared) the  _ haut ton _ would never accept her if she seemed too comfortable with them.

What she did know was that they dressed in fripperies, some very revealing indeed, which men seemed to like; they did things that virtuous women (who were concerned only with the getting of an heir) did not; and they were hideously expensive, requiring presents of jewelry at all times. The jewelry was out: if Lord Alderaan considered her in that light, he would think that giving her his name was the present for all time. She would need, in that case, to cater to him, to pretend to care about his whims, to put on a performance.

Rey had never been good at performing. She did not think she could succeed, and she did not know enough about the relations between men and women to try. But she took comfort in the fact that it was most unlikely that Alderaan would require it of her. Now that he had secured her fortune, he could support ten lights o’ love if he so chose, more beautiful than Rey and far more experienced. Therefore, she determined, she would behave like the bashful virgin she was, and let him believe that she had no more awareness of physical love than the most sheltered schoolroom chit.

When she finally returned to the house it was necessary for her to be scrubbed again, and she took supper in her room. Some plant she had encountered was covered in tiny burrs, which had attached themselves to her hair, and it was no small task to comb them out: Bebe  _ would _ yank at her scalp. Eventually Rey sent her away, telling her to go flirt with Santigo Milon.

"Il est trop jeune!" Bebe responded indignantly, as she swept out. "Je dois me décider entre Bullock ou Turnbull ! Mais il se ressemblent tellement qu'il est impossible de choisir."  


The burrs were a good way to preserve the calmness of mind Rey had found in the hedge maze, requiring both patience and delicacy of touch to remove. When they were gone, she brushed her hair carefully, smoothing it with her hands, and began to plait it as Finn had when they were children: one, two, three loops over each ear, pinned in place and held down with a kerchief, like some medieval saint.

She was knotting the kerchief at the nape of her neck when her husband, finally, opened the door, without so much as a knock.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: This is the first chapter with sexual content. If you have been reading thus far, you're aware of the characters' situation and can make your own decision about whether you consider it dubcon or not and whether you wish to continue reading. If consent ever gets more dubious than it is in this chapter, I promise I will warn for it.

Rey had to force herself not to stand up from her dressing table. With a supreme effort of will, she patted her hair into place and said, “Your Grace.”

Her husband grimaced. “I asked that you call me ‘Kylo.’”

“Very well—Kylo.”

She was not sure if she was relieved or concerned that he had not changed his clothes. On the one hand, she was wearing hers, and in the warmth of the late summer had not bothered to throw a dressing-gown over the thin white linen of her nightgown; she was aware that this casual style of dress put her at a disadvantage. On the other hand she was not sure how she would react to seeing him wrapped in a banyan, nor could she imagine what would lie underneath.

That was not to say that he was  _ dressed _ , of course. He had removed his jacket, his waistcoat and his cravat; his hair was mussed in a way that had nothing to do with the prevailing fashion and everything (Rey assumed) to do with his running his hands through it. He looked rather like he had the night she had accepted his offer of marriage, and she supposed this must be his normal appearance, when in private.

He was very tall and his shoulders very broad. They seemed to fill the door-frame.

“May I enter?” he said.

“You may,” Rey told him, though some disagreeable part of her said ‘yes, of course you may, you need not even ask me; after all, as your wife, I am now legally merely your appendage.’

Rey had asked that there be no fire kindled in her grate, for fear of the heat becoming oppressive; now she regretted it a little. Kylo carried a candle, and when he entered placed it next to hers on the dressing-table, but it did not give much light. The moon was high and bright, but even so he seemed to fade into the background when he moved to sit in one of the plain little chairs she had been provided with. She could not perfectly see his face, only make out the pale shape of it, that proud nose, the smudges of beauty marks.

“Need we speak of this?” he said.

The disagreeable part of her answered ‘of what? Of consummating our marriage? Of course we must—we must dissect it like doctors with a corpse—we must beat it until it is dead,’ but this time it was easier to crush that little voice into submission, for somehow she had the impression that Lord Alderaan was worried, that he was not entirely in control of his own emotions.

“I do not think we need to,” she said, instead. “I have been told that virtuous women, in general, do not.”

“And the unvirtuous ones?”

“Unvirtuous ladies may speak of what they chuse,” she said.

“Are you virtuous?”

Rey tried, and failed, to discern the meaning of the question: he did not spit it, as though he were angry, and yet for what other reason would a man ask a woman such a thing? “I am a virgin, if that is what you mean,” she said, seeing no reason to play coy.

“I suppose that is the same thing,” Kylo said. “I will likely hurt you.”

Her contrary self wanted to say ‘yes, well, I would expect no less from the Butcher of London,’ but she could not quite put that interpretation on his words. He was not angry, she felt certain. Perhaps he did not wish to damage his expensive toy. “I am given to understand that the pain does not persist,” she said.

“Very well,” he said.

She found that she wanted him to close the space between them, to come to her, to take control of the situation, but he did not. He sat with his legs planted far apart, as though to take up as much room as he might, yet he remained still and patient. She folded her hands in her lap for a moment, reminding herself that she was to play the shy maiden, but it was intolerable.

She got up. She crossed to him and stood between his legs.

It was strange to be taller than Alderaan, to watch his head tilt back, tracking her movement. His face was utterly slack, wiped of expression; it was strange, and she wished for something, anything to tell her whether she was behaving as she ought. His skin was pale, translucent even, and so close she could count the constellations of moles and freckles that dotted his face. She touched one, on his right cheek, then gaining confidence traced her finger to the next, then up to the mark high on his cheekbone, where a gentleman of the previous generation might have placed a patch.

His slack expression was strange, and it was strange also to be touching skin to skin. At balls one always wore gloves; before tonight she had thought them merely an affectation, a way to show one’s wealth, but now she saw that they were a careful hedge against intimacy. Before she had felt the heat of Kylo’s body: now she felt the velvet of his cheek, and the rougher texture where stubble was beginning to grow. 

He turned his head into her palm, and kissed it, and she heard a gasp and realized that it had come from her own mouth.

He raised his hands slowly, slowly, and fitted them to her waist. She could not tell if he drew her down into his lap, or if she traveled there under her own power. In the half-light his eyes looked black. Were they always that color? She could not remember, could not think of what her earlier impressions of him had been—with one exception. She had wondered if there were stays beneath his Weston coat, if padding filled out the shoulders: she had seen him in shirtsleeves enough now to know that was not the case, but cradled in his embrace she could feel the strength and solidity of him, the corded muscles in his thighs against the backs of her legs. Her left hand traced down his neck to his shoulder, and without conscious will she slipped it under the linen of his shirt, so she could feel the soft skin there too, the firm plane of his chest. 

He moved his face towards hers, ever so slowly, and she thought she could not bear the anticipation, but also she did not dare to move. He kissed her, and something broke free: she did not care that he was a bad person, that he had ruined girls, that he had killed his father in an accident or by malice, that he had let his estate fall to pieces with no thought whatsoever for the well-being of the people who depended on him. She was caught up in a vast wave of what must be lust, of terrible carelessness, of absolute clarity and depthless need.

The world seemed to become less ordered. Rey could not have enumerated the things they did, not because she did not know the words for them (although she did not) but because they seemed to flow together, though in the moment they seemed perfectly discrete and comprehensible. She must have been carried to the bed; she could not remember her feet touching the ground. His fingers had undone the knot of her kerchief (or had hers? It was hard to say) and had teased her hair from its plaits, spreading it over her shoulders and breasts. She knew that the soft wool of his trousers was thinner than she had imagined and that he was hottest there between his legs, long and lovely like the rest of him,  and yet somehow when she had shucked her nightgown and felt his fingers explore her body and felt that satin head brush against her she was not at all concerned that he would not fit. She might be a virgin but her body knew what it wanted, knew what it needed to do, and she was utterly ruled by it.

But then. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then he pressed into her, and physically it was what her body had longed for, but her heart was all confusion: Why should he be sorry? 

He closed his eyes and somehow seemed to go away from her, to retreat into some inner sanctum. She did not know what to do. In their marriage vows he had sworn that “with my body, I thee worship,” and what they had been doing had felt like worship, for all it was required of them. She knew that for children to come he had to enter her and spill his seed, and when they were caught in that great river of emotion she had thought that perhaps it would be a pleasure, but now she felt as though she were alone in her bed, touching herself and only imagining Kylo.

When he was finished she felt quite cold.

“Thank you,” he said. “You are very kind.”

She had not really expected that he would stay with her long after, so she was not surprised when he retreated through the shared door to his own bedroom, but she was disappointed nonetheless. Everything was sticky and unpleasantly squelchy, even after she had used the chamber pot, and she felt simultaneously just the same and deeply, fundamentally, different.

She had enjoyed herself—at first. Taking her husband inside her had been uncomfortable, yes, but uncomfortable in the way anything new was, uncomfortable the way riding a horse had been the first time. She still did not see what he had to apologize for. 

There was one thing that was certain, one thing which she meditated on, as she stared at the bed’s canopy and willed herself to sleep: she did not have nearly as good an idea of Lord Benjamin Solo of Alderaan as she had supposed. Nowhere in her projections for how the evening might go had she imagined that he might care one bit for her comfort; nowhere had she imagined that she would respond so fervently to his touch. 

* * *

Kylo had always known himself a sensitive man, given to sudden moods. Being told to control himself, as a child, would inevitably send him into ecstasies of rage; as an adult, he had gained a measure of self-control, but saw no need to fundamentally change his own character. He was temperamental: that was all. Emotion was a form of cognition, and to deny it would be to deny the full power of his mind.

Still he had the capacity to surprise himself sometimes, when his emotions far outstripped his rationality. Then he would find himself taking actions that he could not consciously explain, and only later piece together what he must have been feeling. 

This was the experience of being betrothed and married to the former Miss Rey Jakku. He did not think himself overset at first; if he merely smiled at the money changing hands at White’s when the notices appeared in the newspapers, this was no very unusual thing. He could be quite tolerant when he wished—witness his condescension to Hux’s opera-dancers, whenever he was brought into company with them, which was rarely—and he had never been above a flutter on an odd circumstance. He had won a guinea when the Prince Regent’s wife had had enough and fled to Europe, for picking the nearest date to her embarkation.

Then again, if a man bespoke new clothes for his wedding, was it not only right and proper? Perhaps others might wear any old rags they had to hand: for the Duke of Alderaan it was necessary to bespeak a new coat, almost ostentatiously austere. A waterfall cravat was unobjectionable; and if a diamond stick-pin, rarely worn, was used to secure it, who would consider it wrong for a man to look his best on what some said would be the most important day of his life?

Of course it would not be the most important day of Kylo’s, but after all it had been agreed that they were to behave as though this were a most ordinary and conventional marriage. 

It was Hux who finally told him he was behaving “damned oddly, man,” when he uttered not a word of complaint about St. George’s Hanover Square, or the droning parson who gave a homily direct from the  _ Book of Common Prayer, _ or the insipid wedding-breakfast. 

“It is an odd day,” Ren said, studying his new bride from across the room. She was speaking to his mother, or rather, his mother was speaking and she was eating: did she ever stop? Was she secretly on a reducing diet? Certainly she was making up for a half-starved childhood. When she thought no-one was looking she had abominable table manners, he had realized, but she became very proper the moment she was observed.

“You needn’t tell  _ me _ that,” Hux said, idly flipping his snuff-box open and shut. “How long will you rusticate yourself? D’you think you can do your business in one month?”

“The business of rebuilding Duke’s Alderaan? No; I’ve given it up for a loss.”

Hux snapped the snuff-box more slowly. “And here I thought that was the purpose of marrying La Jakku.”

“It was,” Ren said. “I shall build or buy another and shift the seat. The place is hopeless.”

“Yet you bring her there?”

“It does render  _ some _ shelter from the elements.”

“And you would not have her in London, I suppose. Well enough. But: one month?”

Ren took the snuffbox out of Hux’s very hand to stop the irritating clack-clack-clack. “I hardly know what you mean,” he said.

He  _ did _ know, for it was Lady Snoke all over again: When would he set up his nursery? This was the only possible reason to marry, other than old Luke’s money, and he suspected that the books at White’s—now closed on his marriage—were accepting bets on the date of his future son or daughter’s birth. Were he to look, he might find that Hux had put down for an eight-month baby. Still he found that he did not want to indulge his friend’s prurience, nor to cause a disturbance at the wedding-breakfast: pretended ignorance it would have to be.

It was coming to him slowly that his choices in matters regarding his new wife were not generally made to improve his comfort, but hers. This was respectable behavior, he supposed; she was part of him now, two persons made one flesh, if the rector was to be believed, and so to indulge her feelings was to indulge his own.

Very often their feelings were in opposition to each other, however. On that first stage, the first moments they were alone together as man and wife, he almost could not breathe for the awareness of her body so close to his; he had sequestered himself in the very farthest corner of the seat, and yet six or ten inches of distance could not remove from his mind the knowledge that this was his wife, this Incomparable, and that if he wished to speak to her in any way or to touch her or even to take her in the moving carriage there was not the least impropriety about it. His head swam with it, and with the heavy, drugging scent of roses from the nosegay his new wife carried.

He nearly laughed when he realised she believed him to be carriage-sick. If he was sick with anything it was lust, not so much for his Duchess’s body as for the liberty he might take with her and no one to tell him ‘no.’

Yet there was another side to it as well. Across the supper-table at Takodana he saw his new wife as a child, almost: she was ten years his junior, and for all Hux thought she was well up to snuff he was sure she was inexperienced. It was as it should be; Lady Snoke would hardly have promoted his marriage to a hardened jade. It had been easy, when she was spitting fire at him and telling him that he was a Gothic villain and making uncanny guesses about his mood, to think of her as an adversary, as his coarse unyielding mother come again. 

Lady Snoke would say that now Rey was his rightful prize, siezed in the war between the sexes, and now to be brought utterly under his control; she would say that any thing that would promote his mastery over his new wife was acceptable. She certainly believed that and operated under such principles in her own life.

Yet if Kylo was to bring Rey to heel, like one of his dogs, he could not mistreat her any more than he would mistreat one of his beloved animals. Lady Snoke might keep her pack how she liked; _ he _ was not so cack-handed. For all his tempers he knew, core-deep, that creatures give cruelty back for cruelty, and kindness for kindness.

Rey was not a creature. She was a woman. A very young woman.

He could not bring himself to open her door and violate the sanctity of her bedroom, though he drank four glasses of very mediocre brandy in the taproom. He would give her time to become accustomed to him, a few more hours at least, until they were at Duke’s Alderaan. Then he could possess her: then it would not be so heartless.

* * *

Kylo was surprised to find that he still knew, instinctively, when their carriage passed the border of his land.

The closer they got to Duke’s Alderaan the less he wanted to go there. Lady Snoke had impressed upon him the importance of rusticating his new bride as soon as possible; he had agreed that the best situation would be for Rey to become fixed in the country as Kylo was fixed in town. Still he was not prepared for the way Reffe truckled to him or the way Featherstonehaugh chided him; he was made uncomfortable by the grateful, doggish stares of his tenants; he was not prepared for the sense of wrongness that rose in him when he saw that great sooty house set in its green sward.

How could it seem wrong, that the house was burned? It had been that way for his entire lifetime. He had never known it whole, except in the miniature his mother had shown him often and often when he was a boy. There had been more of the house standing then: he had played in the Great Chamber, had even narrowly escaped being crushed by a falling piece of stonework once, before Nurse had forbidden  him to climb about the ruins like a monkey.

Thinking of that led him to think of his own children: would they be raised here? Would it be safe for them to be raised here? If there were a Dower House it would have been simple. He would have informed his mother that she might not have it any more, and he would have installed Rey there. But there was nothing like, only a few scruffy outbuildings, and to leave her there would certainly be a scandal.

Of course he might give his children to Lady Snoke’s care, he supposed, and that would put an end to the problem.

But he could not sit lost in thought long. having delivered Rey into Mrs. Dodd’s capable hands, he went to see to the horses. Between the barouche, the traveling-coach, and the carriage he had sent ahead, there were more than he had kept stabled at Duke’s Alderaan for years—and that was leaving out his black stallion, Fighter, and the pretty blue roan.

When Kylo had purchased the mare at Tattersall’s he had no thought but to keep her out of Rey’s hands. He had been in a vengeful mood, and putting upstart Captain Storm out of countenance had pleased him immensely. He could not precisely afford another horse, but what did it matter? He had supposed, then, that he might offer for Lady Carise Sindian at any time, and so pay off his creditors.

The roan was a glorious beast, though: Captain Storm was a judge of horseflesh, Kylo had to admit. She whickered gently at him as he entered her stall, murmuring a greeting. Yes, she had been tended well enough; he was told there had been no problems on the road, and she was a sweet goer, if a little headstrong.

Well, headstrong could describe the woman who would ride her, too. He envisioned his new wife ahorse—was she a good rider? He did not know. He had never seen her in the Park except in a carriage, usually driven by the inescapable Captain Storm, sometimes by the unbearable Lieutenant Dameron. If she was not he would have to teach her, and she would likely take it ill.

It was easier to be at Duke’s Alderaan in the stables; there Kylo had a job to do, and he could almost imagine himself at Melton, safe in his hunting box where the society was all other sportsmen, where his value was measured in his skill, where his hounds formed their protective pack around him. He could not stay in the stables for ever, though. There was dinner to get through, and then the hours after.

Dinner was the most awkward meal Kylo had ever eaten, but one good thing came of it: speaking without thought he found himself telling Rey that no, he had no intention of rebuilding Duke’s Alderaan. He had said as much to Hux, but never to any one else; saying it now, to his lawfully wedded wife, it was as though a great weight lifted from him. He did not  _ have _ to live his life enslaved to this hulking wreck. He could chuse to live in town; he could leave Capability Brown’s grounds to deteriorate if he wished. He could tear it all down and start afresh somewhere else. He could set another fire and burn the house to the ground if he chose!

That image stayed with him as he went out to ride after dinner: in the stables he had seen that Fighter was restive, excited to see his master and in need of exercise. He pushed the horse hard, rode him helter-skelter over the green sward—it was so overgrown that it might as well have been a paddock. He jumped hedge and ditch with wild abandon; if he was not to go to Melton he might as well go neck-or-nothing here!

After some time Fighter was becoming more steady, tired now and ready to obey. Kylo turned him back towards the house and, as he came, imagined its destruction. He would tear it down roof to foundation; the outbuildings would go too; there would be nothing left but a square of stones, the cornerstone perhaps still set in the earth, and he would cause there to be a plaque placed: HERE WAS THE SEAT OF THE DUKES OF ALDERAAN, FROM THE MISTY PAST UNTIL 18—. Then he would look at it, and all the memories that were here would be set free: he would turn away, and go back to London, and the next time he met his mother or Mr. Threepio or even Mr. Chewbacca it would be as though they were strangers. He could be cold, or polite, or even kind in a distant sort of way. His emotions would not rage. There would be nothing for them to rage at.

It would be blissful.

It was with these congenial thoughts that he took himself to his quarters, supped, bathed, and prepared himself for his wife. At first he supposed he might simply wrap himself in a dressing-gown, but this he found exposed far too much of himself. She would think it a liberty. She would not wish for such an intimacy. It would be his day-to-day clothes, then: she had seen him in them constantly, had seen him in shirt-sleeves once, and had never expressed her displeasure.

He did not wish to go in. He knew what lay behind that door: a girl who wanted nothing to do with him. 

What he found, yes, was a girl who wanted nothing to do with him: but also a girl who knew her duty, who applied herself to it with every attention. He wanted desperately to sink into her embraces, to imagine that her kisses were for him, truly for him: he wanted to imagine that she saw through him all the time, like she had when she came to his house so late and mocked him and accepted his proposal of marriage, and that she did not hate what she saw, and that it even inspired tender feelings in her.

He knew that this could not be the case. He would not indulge in phantasies. She is very kind, he thought to himself, so as not to lose his rational mind in pleasure. She pities you, and that is why she is so kind.

When he had finished she seemed to know that there was no need for further pretense. Her soft freckled moon of a face, which had been so abandoned to wantonness (which she had  _ made to seem _ abandoned to wantonness, he corrected himself) moments before now seemed guarded, and he knew it was time to go.

Back in the loneliness of his own bedchamber, he told himself that it had gone well, that he was well satisfied with his new wife. He would give her the roan tomorrow as a wedding-present.

He did not interrogate too deeply the fact that he felt lonelier than before.


	11. Chapter 11

It was impossible to be upset at Duke’s Alderaan in the morning, Rey found. For one thing, the double windows in her room meant that she woke up to sunlight and a chorus of birds, warbling their end-of-summer hymns. Then there was everything fresh at breakfast, brought especially to her, as she and Lord Alderaan (no: _ Kylo _ ) were the only ones in the house, except for the servants. She nearly cried at the taste of milk still warm from the cow. There were cows in London, of course, but somehow the milk was still just _ wrong _ . Milk had been the first thing Luke had given her to drink, when she came to Ahch-To Hall, and it would always taste like comfort to her.

Her husband was not in evidence in their shared sitting-room, which made it easy to put him out of her mind. She had made a list in her mind of all the things she needed to accomplish, as soon as possible, at Duke’s Alderaan, and she was excited to begin.

The first stop was the kitchens, where Mrs. Dodd was in conference with the cook. “You  _ are _ an early riser—begging your pardon, Your Grace,” she said, “only I was that surprised when Bebe said you were ready for your breakfast!”

“I’ve a lot to do, Mrs. Dodd!” Rey said, snagging an early apple from a bowl on the counter and crunching into it with relish. “I thought we might go over the menus in the kitchen, with Cook, so I might get to know you both, and so you can tell me if you need anything from the village, for I intend to go into Alderaan Dean to-day. I shall likely be out during dinner; I will want a large supper, but it may be anything that is left over.” 

The menus were unobjectionable, but not elaborate: some gentle prying convinced Rey that the kitchens were in need of certain new equipment, as broken crockery had gone unreplaced for too long. They were in need of wine and brandy as well: Rey would have thought her husband would have taken care of this, as he was evidently a man of many pleasures, but it seemed that most of the old Duke’s cellars had been destroyed in the fire and neither Lady Leia nor Ren had bothered to lay in a new supply.

That would never do, Rey thought: cellars were a part of a great house as much as the grounds or the stables, and they must be cared for, for the sake of the next generation. Luke had taught her that, at Ahch-To Hall; in fact she thought that perhaps they might transfer some of the stores there down to Duke’s Alderaan. But these matters were somewhat outside her experience; she told Cook to order what crockery she needed, and promised to speak to her husband on the subject of wine. 

As for the location of the kitchens—they were in the nearest outbuilding, the main house’s kitchens having been lost around the time of the Great Chamber’s collapse. She could see already that it would be a great strain on the servants to ferry food from the outbuildings to the main house; this was the first time the Duke had been in residence since the loss, and they hadlikely hoped it would be easier, but they had found this to be a false hope. Rey was half-way to suggesting that she and Kylo eat with the servants in the servants hall, so everything would be simpler. Fortunately she realized this was supposed to be beneath her dignity and held her tongue—but she could not help but think that it was utterly stupid for everything to be in such disarray.

These tasks completed, she moved on. She did not really expect to find Mr. Albemarle at his desk, for the steward at Ahch-To Hall had made it a practice to ride out and see the tenants each morning, saving desk-labor for the hotter hours in the afternoon, but as it was in the same building as the kitchen she decided to check—and there he was, head bent over a ledger-book. 

They were not in conversation long. It did not  _ take _ long for Rey to comprehend the situation. Mr. Albemarle was not vicious. Neither did he have a cunning mind. He was slow, courteous, and meticulous; but he did not seek out new information, nor come up with novel solutions to problems. He had been shamefully neglected for at least as long as Rey’s husband had been of age, and his favorite refrain was “when the old Duke was here—”

But the old Duke had not been alive for more than thirty years, and wishing him back from eternity did nobody any good.

Presented with such a sad old fossil, Rey did not feel quite confident enough to give him  _ carte blanche _ with her fortune, to improve the estate as he would—it was a rather larger matter than telling Cook to buy crockery. (The fact that she was no longer strictly legally permitted to spend her own money in this way without her husband’s approval did not escape her, but she determined that until someone told her otherwise, she would behave as though she had as much right to draw on the Alderaan coffers as he did.) Instead she ordered the estate’s books for the past forty years to be brought to her sitting-room, so that she might begin her study of them after her morning ride.

It was with some apprehension that she approached the stables. She did not know what sort of cattle she would find there. She supposed that  _ one  _ of the carriage-horses at least would be broken to saddle, if there were no others; she was a better whip than rider, but she had no doubts that she could master whatever she found.

What she found was a hodgepodge. There were Kylo’s own carriage-horses, four finely matched with glossy black coats, which she had seen many times. They had been sent up slowly with Bebe and His Grace’s valet. The post horses were still stabled there waiting to be returned. A few old sway-backed beasts seemed to belong to the house or grounds, and Rey supposed there was always work for a gentle cart-horse on such a large estate. The great black stallion she had seen Kylo ride was not there, but only because her husband was out: he had been brought up with them.

There was yet one horse in the stables: a blue roan.

Was it the blue roan Rey had instructed Finn to buy? It must be, she thought—though she had never seen the animal herself; she had been told that proper young ladies did not go to Tattersall’s. If it was, Lord Alderaan had not given it to Lady Carise Sindian. Well, of course he had not! She was not his wife; she could not accept such a present. Certainly he could not expect to ride the mare himself; she would be a ridiculous small mount for a large man.

It was a pleasure to order the roan saddled and ride her out. She had a lovely soft mouth and a willing temperament; Rey knew within ten minutes that they would deal extremely together. If she were honest with herself, she was relieved: she did not want to have her first encounter with her husband’s tenants seated on a restive horse, or one that did not show to advantage. She would have quite enough to worry about without such distractions.

* * *

By the time Rey returned to Duke’s Alderaan Kylo had worked himself up into a high pitch of frustration.

He had not imagined that his new wife would be awake with the birds. He had risen himself at a leisurely hour and gone for a quick, bruising ride. When he returned he had expected the servants to be able to direct him to Rey, but they could not. “She’s gone out, sir,” was the chorus. 

Gone out, certainly, but to spend the entire day in Alderaan Dean, speaking with who-knew-who? Gone out without a manservant to accompany her? Gone out—worst of all—on the horse Kylo had intended to give to her, with all due pomp and ceremony?

To add insult to injury, he found (later in the day) that Mr. Albemarle was engaged in ferrying fully forty volumes of the estate’s ledgers from his office to Rey’s sitting-room. “She wished to see them,” was all Albemarle could say to explain himself. “She seems to have a head for management, that one, to go with her fortune, my Lord; may I congratulate you on your wise choice?”

Kylo did not care about Rey’s head for management. He did not care about the estate’s ledgers: they did not matter, any more that Alderaan Dean mattered. What mattered was that he was not to be ignored. He would not  _ allow _ himself to be ignored. 

He stationed himself in the sitting-room and wrote letters—to Lady Snoke, to his man of business in London, to one of his fellows in the House of Lords whose advice he wanted upon a political point. He was considering the possibility of writing to his mother (though he feared that opening a correspondence would do him no good and only encourage her) when Rey finally appeared in a rush.

“But you cannot imagine, Bebe,” she was saying gaily over her shoulder, “how easy it will be—” Her cheeks were flagged with color, in pretty contrast to her sage-green riding habit; she had caught the skirt up carelessly in one hand, revealing a pretty ankle in a pretty riding-boot dyed to match. He even admired the jaunty tricorne that perched atop her head, fastened with a shining gold pin. 

How stupid to be distracted by his beautiful wife. Her vivacity only meant that she would rather be anywhere than trapped in this dull backwater with Kylo of all people. She belonged with a white knight, not a Dark Duke. 

But he had won her and he would have her!

He stood and was pleased at the way she stopped in her tracks when she realized his presence. “You were missed at dinner,” he said.

He had braced for an acid tongue, but nothing of the sort. “Oh! I did not see you there. Why, I did not know we were to dine together! You must know I need to begin to learn the place; so I thought I would ride out, and I am very glad I did, for I met so many people, and Featherstonehaugh—I suppose I should call him Vicar?—says that he has had permission to hire a curate, and I think we ought to meet the candidates, for we shall have to live with whoever he chuses.”

Kylo blinked. He had no notion of Featherstonehaugh’s ever retiring. The man had overseen the parish at Alderaan Dean since he was a boy! As for a curate— “His pay will come from Featherstonehaugh’s pocket, not mine, so I do not see why I ought to trouble myself with this curate,” he said. “I did not think you were devout.”

Rey crossed her arms. “I am not,” she said, “not excessively devout, in any case. But a priest in a country parish is a very important man. You must know this! Featherstonehaugh was an absolute font of information. Did you know how very poor the cows are here? Their milk is perfectly delicious, but they produce barely any. I have never seen such sorry stock; of course you cannot be blamed for that, and I have not myself actually seen the tenant cottages, but I cannot help but think that some of the ill health that has been suffered of late has prevented the farmers from investing in good animals, and such numbers of agues can only be put down to drafts everywhere, so Featherstonehaugh says. Perhaps you will say he is not a trustworthy source; but priests generally are, if they take any interest in their flock at all, and I can see that he does.”

Kylo was quite overwhelmed by this rush of information. He did not know how very poor the cows were; did not think he could tell a bad cow from a good one by sight; knew nothing of the agues that his tenants had suffered, and less about whether their cottages were drafty or snug. He did not  _ need _ to know these things. The steward had always dealt with them, and he could go on dealing with them. “Mr. Albemarle—” he began.

“Mr. Albemarle is a milksop,” Rey said. “He will do nothing you do not tell him to do, directly, in small words. I do not say he is incompetent: he is very competent within his bounds, he gets the crops in the ground and collects the rents, but he has no initiative, and he will never, never tell you that he needs money to make your estate profitable.”

“Just as well, for until we were wed I had none,” Kylo said, feeling the sting in the truth of that statement.

“I know that, but now you do, and whatever you plan to do with Duke’s Alderaan you cannot ignore your tenants any longer. But we must speak about that some day soon: I do not think you can really want to leave this lovely old place where you grew up, though I suppose the building may not be salvageable—”

This was a bridge too far. “We will not discuss that.”

She made a ridiculous little moue, the kind of moue that Alderaan had seen debutantes use when they were not honored with a dance, or when they wished to be coquettish. It was adorable and yet it was enraging. “But,” she said, “we will have to discuss it eventually. This way of living cannot go on indefinitely.”

“ _ Can it not? _ ” he asked, hearing his own voice growing louder in his ears. “I do not recall anything in our settlements or in the wedding ceremony that granted you the least control over my estates and my houses. I can do what I chuse with them; we have no need to discuss it. Ever.”

The moue went away. It was replaced with higher color, and a sterner expression. “I will not allow your tenants to suffer,” she said.

“You will not ‘allow’ anything. You have no influence over the lives of my tenants. The settlements—”

“Do not quote the settlements to me!” she spat, now truly angry. “I read the settlements just as you did; do you think me illiterate or too stupid to care where my money is bestowed? The settlements have no relevance here. By custom, by ancient custom a Duchess is responsible for the well-being of the Duchy’s tenants, whose families have lived on your family’s land for ever.”

“As though they were serfs! You  _ do _ want to play Lady Bountiful, admit it!” He had seen that covetous look in her eye as they had ridden through Alderaan Rise, how she had stared at the little children. He should have known his uncle Luke had infected her with the desire to appear a saint.

“‘As though they were serfs.’ But I hold no medieval fantasies.  _ You _ are the one who names your dogs after the Knights of the Round Table.”

“That has nothing to do with your impertinence!”

“It has everything to do with your childishness! You are the Duke of Alderaan and you have responsibilities to your land and your people!”

She was actually crying, he saw, and she clearly did not care that it ruined her looks. “Sniveling, sniveling,” he said, “as though you have any sense of what responsibility truly is. You know nothing about my life and my responsibilities. You know nothing about how I was raised or about being the Duchess of Alderaan.” He knew bitterness was creeping in to his words.

“I know nothing of how you were raised, Your Grace, but I know all about being someone’s responsibility, and being ignored and cast off,” she said, sniffling and trying hard to pretend her emotions had never gotten the best of her in the first place. “I know all about what happens when people are too poor to live.”

She did, too, he realized, and realized that he had sounded worse than bitter—he had sounded petty. Well, perhaps he  _ was _ petty. “You never had a family. You couldn’t understand,” he said.

“Try me,” she said.

But he did not. He gathered himself up to his full height and retreated into his bedchamber, where he stayed until he was sure she had gone into hers.

* * *

At Ahch-To Hall Rey had been taught, most carefully, the business of the estate. She had helped the housekeeper and had helped the steward. She had been encouraged to use her not inconsiderable wits to problem-solve and to economize, to come up with new schemes for the improvement of the farm. Most of all she had been led to see the great forces that ran through a healthy community: the weather, the water, the land. The lines of power that radiated from the lord, from the priest, from the pillars of the community that guided opinion. The deeply-worn grooves of tradition, those behaviors people cling to and ideas about the world they hold long after they’ve become outmoded, which must be understood before they can be changed.

These things she could see in Alderaan Rise, in Alderaan Dean, and in Duke’s Alderaan. She did not perfectly comprehend them yet, but she knew that with time she would, and that once she had she would understand what could be accomplished and what could not. She would herself become integrated into the great web of relationships, and would strengthen it, and would work to keep it whole.

She had no insight into the Duke, however. Partially she knew this was because his world view was so utterly alien to her. Until their argument about her ride to Alderaan Dean, she had not thoroughly understood that he did not care about his tenants. She had made excuses for him, considered that perhaps he cared but did not know how to show it, considered that he had no money and therefore could make no improvements to their lives.

Now she knew that was not so, and the attitude seemed both foreign and immoral. It put her in mind of the girls he had ruined, by report. It put her in mind of the way he had behaved to her when they first met. Perhaps she had looked too hard to see the good in her new husband, and had fooled herself into thinking that because he had beautiful hands and a beautiful body buried beneath gloves and coats he might have a beautiful soul buried beneath layers of armor as well. 

But there was  _ something _ beneath his behavior. No one could speak so bitterly of his childhood home without cause. Rey looked back on the streets and on the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls with little nostalgia, but she did not think her voice had ever taken on that acerbic tone when she spoke of them. 

“What happened to you?” she said aloud, as though her own face in the mirror would speak back to her and tell her the story of Benjamin Solo’s life.

She consoled herself with the estate’s books and with a hearty supper, remedies guaranteed to make her feel better. Then, too, there was Bebe’s gossip, free-flowing and wide-ranging, which provided an entirely new perspective on the inhabitants of Duke’s Alderaan. Rey could not think why she should want to know that Cook’s favorite color was pink, but she tucked it away in her mind for future use.

It did not take long for her to realize that coming to terms with the history of the estate would take her many days’ study; the books were extensive. She planned the following day accordingly: she would ride out to Alderaan Rise, where she had been told there was an orphanage, and then return (before dinner this time) to continue poring over the old records. This program required her to wake with the sun again, so Bebe put her to bed early, setting her hair in its curls and bringing a pitcher of cool water in case she woke in the night.

Rey had almost fallen asleep when the door to her chambers opened.

She had not thought it possible that her husband would come to her that evening. It was not so much that they had disagreed as that he had seemed so bitterly angry. She had seen him that way before, slamming around his mother’s library, and had found he was still nursing it hours later when she came to accept his offer of marriage. 

In truth she was not sure that she wanted him to come to her: she did not find his anger endearing, and did not find his cavalier way of speaking about his estate admirable, and most of all had found their previous encounter unsatisfying. He had turned cold, and she did not know how to speak of it, how to ask for anything different, or even if she ought to do so.

But there he was, in his loose shirt and tight breeches, carrying a candle. In the low light she could just make out that his long, slender feet were bare. She wondered what they looked like, what his legs looked like out of their cloth casings.

She lay silent in the bed, but he did not go away. He closed the door and set his candle on her dressing-table. He ran his big fingers gently over the boar bristles of her hairbrush, over its silver handle. She imagined him running them over her hair, her neck.

“This is a surprise, sir,” she said, falling back on formality, even as she sat up and adjusted her night-rail to more fully cover herself.

He let his head fall forward as he fingered the brush. His hair, in all its unfashionable length, fell in a curtain across his face. “We have a duty to perform,” he said, without looking at her.

“When we argued,” she began, then thought better of it. She said instead, “It cannot be so important that we get a child.”

He looked at her. In the candle-light his sallow skin was golden, but his eyes were blacker than ever. “It is past time I set up my nursery,” he said. “The duchy has no heir.”

“I thought you didn’t care about the duchy.” Rey curled her knees into her chest, wrapped her arms around them.

“I don’t care for Duke’s Alderaan. There is a difference.”

“I don’t see it.”

He left off with the brush and came to sit on the end of the bed, ignoring the way she had curled into herself. “I realize the—act—cannot be comfortable for you,” he said, his voice a little softer. He looked at her arms, wrapped around her legs, as he spoke. “Still, if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere best done quickly.”

Rey could not help it: she laughed.  His face, which had gentled, had become a still mask once more, and she knew she had offended him. “It’s only that Countess Holdo said just that to me, ‘if it were done when ‘tis done,’ when we were married,” she said. “Do you know where it comes from?”

“ _ Macbeth, _ ” he said. “I am not wholly ignorant, though I know less than you about running an estate.”

She was surprised; she had not thought he would ever admit such a thing. “I looked it up when the Countess said it,” she told him. “I’ve never seen  _ Macbeth. _ The point: it is all about an assassination.”

This time he laughed, a little sadly. “The French call it  _ la petite mort. _ ”

“Why would assassination be little?”

“Not assassination. The act of—of consummation.” He could not meet her eye. He pressed on. “You did not like to have such liberties taken with you. They are my right. But I promise I will stop when you bear an heir.”

Perhaps Rey ought to have taken this as evidence that her husband wished to heal the breach caused by their fight; perhaps she ought to have taken it as evidence that he cared for her feelings, and that she was seeing beneath his pretensions. But she was irritated that she had not known what he meant by  _ la petite mort,  _ and she was annoyed by the easy way he assumed that he could divine her feelings. “Ah, you know me so well,” she said, not bothering to keep sarcasm out of her voice. “You have stood up to dance with me six times—you see I have kept count!—and ridden two days in a carriage with me, and had as many as ten conversations with me, and been married to me, and therefore you know everything about me, my inner feelings, my likes and dislikes. I am so glad that you will order the world to my tastes.”

He sat back, sneering, an ugly expression that Rey had not seen in what seemed like weeks. “Ungrateful—” Then he seemed confused, and then, slowly, dawn broke over his countenance. “It was not…?” He trailed away, as though he were incapable of forming the sentence.

No power in the world would have induced Rey to clarify her feelings. She ought not to have to! She ought not to be here, explaining everything to this idiotish man, whom she did not even like. She turned her face away so he could not see her blush. 

He reached out to her, curled his hand around the back of her neck. It was a gesture that might have seemed casually possessive, if it had seemed casual: but it was the furthest thing from casual. She could not resist turning back to look at him, down the length of his arm, and though she had intended it to be a defiant stare she was arrested by the melting look in his eyes.

“You do not find me repulsive,” he said, “ugly as I am.”

“No one finds a Duke repulsive.”

“You did,” he said. “You told me so. Or, you did not need to tell me. When I asked you to dance. The first time.”

She took stock of his face then, limned with golden candlelight. She had thought when he came to Ahch-To Hall that it was not a handsome face, but one a portrait-painter might flatter. Now she saw the perfection in each feature. His mouth was a cupid’s-bow over a neat small chin. His nose was too large, too long, but finely formed, straight and proud. The moles scattered across his cheeks gave him character. And the eyes—they were not black beneath their hoods but deep brown, the candle’s flame lending them its fire. 

“You are not ugly, your grace,” she said. She did not even have to continue her catalog of his person to encompass his broad shoulders, slim waist, powerful legs in order to say so.

“But it is not that alone,” he said. He caressed her face with one broad thumb. Rey could feel it tracing the line of her cheekbone, curving around the apple of the cheek, tracing back down to the jaw. “You  _ like _ this.” He could not quite keep the wonder out of his voice.

“Who told you you were ugly?” she said, willing herself to be unmoved by the naked need in his tone. “It was not me. That wound is old,” and she knew she had hit upon something when she felt his grip tighten.

He did not want to speak of it. She knew this because he did not answer her. He leaned across the distance between them, and pulled her to him, and kissed her.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, now I've gotten through the chapters that have already been written. I'm still working on Chapter 12. Fear not: I intend to keep my publishing schedule. However, you may find that there are more edits to older chapters from here on out, since I don't have runway to tinker with things. Just roll with me. If I add earlier scenes or anything major changes, I'll let you know.
> 
> Also, I just started a ketogenic diet and I have cat breath and feel like warmed over ass. That's just a complaint. It's not actually gonna fuck with anything. I hope.


	12. Chapter 12

It was the dead of night when Rey slipped out of her room, down the close servants’ stair, and out of the house to get lost in the hedge maze by the light of the moon.

She had found herself unable to sleep; she had grown used to the noise and hubbub of London, perhaps, and now could not reconcile herself to the quietude of the country. She had felt very alone in her bed, knowing that the only other person sleeping in the big house was Kylo, on the other side of the door.

Somehow being outdoors made her feel less alone. The sky was full of stars; how could she be alone among them? The nightly noises that had seemed distracting in her bedroom now seemed natural to the setting. There were the insects; there were the birds; there was the soft scuttling sound of some small animal darting through the grass, startled at her approach. An owl gently hooted from its perch in the forest.

Rather than pursuing the hedge maze, she turned her steps towards the kitchen-gardens, which she had not yet explored thoroughly. Cook had told her that they had had a tolerably fine stillroom once, and today they wasted more herbs than they used; the servants fed marvelously well on the garden’s produce, all summer long. The tall rows of vegetables waved in the night wind as she pulled her wrap tighter around herself. In the areas reserved for herbs she ran her fingers over the branches of a rosemary bush, raising them to her face to inhale its sweet-spicy scent.

From this distance the house loomed up as a dark bulk against the sky, blotting out the starlight. Rey thought of Kylo alone in it, imagined him lying as still and silent as a carven knight on a tombstone, imagined the house of his forefathers falling down around him as he slept, entombing him forever.

This unexpectedly macabre thought made her shudder, and then laugh at herself: it was ridiculous. Certainly the house was not a pleasant place to be; she could not blame Kylo for disliking it, when half the rooms were unusable (although _her_ room was lovely). But though it might fall down in twenty years, it was not likely to do so today; and he would not be entombed in its rubble if it did.

Still, it is not so easy to shake off the suggestion of uneasy ghosts at night, alone, in a strange place with an extensive history. An ancient church, long desanctified, was beyond the kitchen gardens, and Rey found her way wending towards it. The area around it had once surely been cleared, but today the forest crept right up around to the church’s doorstep: Rey did not know much about architecture, but even she could see that the massy door had been cut from some tree far greater and older than those that grew in the area today; even she could see the round Norman arches and the weathered stone walls had been built hundreds of years before Duke’s Alderaan.

She climbed the steps and tried the handle: it was locked, as she might have expected. But as she turned to go, chiding herself for romanticism, she heard a noise from inside.

It was probably some small creature who had made its nest there—a kitchen cat maybe, having kittens. But in her current mood she could not see her way clear to leaving it be, so she slipped between the trees and around to the transept, where she thought she might find another way in.

She was right. There was a side entrance just before the transept, and the door’s wood had rotted away. What had once been a small hole had obviously been expanded by some industrious person to a gap large enough to admit a large child or—with some squirming—Rey.

By the time Rey made it through the hole, the noises had stopped, but she was sure she was not alone. The church had been cleared of all its furniture, but it was not wholly empty: there were tombs. The Dukes of Alderaan were never buried _here,_ were they? Rey thought, a little desperately. She had seen the stately line of tombstones in the graveyard at Alderaan Dean. Yet _that_ church was newer than this one, and the stones newer as well.

They had to be the Dukes of Alderaan, and their wives and children. Rey counted four tombs with solemn effigies carved into their lids. It was so dark she almost could have imagined them to be corpses if she had not known better. The one nearest her was a woman’s, she thought: drifting toward it and feeling with her fingers she realized that it represented the lady as she must have been when she was very close to death, the painful thinness of very old age evident. Rey could not read the inscription, but she could imagine it: _As you are, I once was; as I am, so you shall someday be,_ perhaps.

This woman might have died in the Black Death—no, if that were so she would not have such a fine coffin. Too many people died then for them to bury so elaborately. Just after it, then, perhaps: she might have buried all her family, as they succumbed, and then lived into old age herself. She might have spent her whole life living at Duke’s Alderaan and never left it. She might have been some great lady from France or Italy, married to the Duke to seal an alliance. She might have never seen her home again. Or she might have made this place her home.

Would Kylo destroy the church, too, if he leveled the manor house? Had this lady’s bones been moved to the churchyard at Alderaan Dean, or would they be lost forever when the building was torn down?

It was quiet. Rey had almost forgotten that she had come into the church in order to investigate a noise when the silence was broken.

“I weren’t poaching, mum,” someone said, and her head whipped up.

It was a child. No, Rey corrected herself: it was a youth, for his voice was breaking. He stood at the end of the apse with something clutched in his hands.

“You frighftened me!” Rey said, stupidly.

“Sorry, mum,” he said. “I’ll be going then, shall I? Mum.”

“No, stay,” she said. “What’s your name?” He was no one she had met among the servants, and she supposed she ought to actually be frightened, trapped in this small space with even a very young man she did not know at such an odd hour of the night. She was not: no one who called her ‘mum’ so very much could be a threat.

“Milton, mum.”

“Milton?”

“The rector, he likes literature.”

“The rector?”

“Mr Reffe, mum. He named me.”

He stepped forward and into a beam of moonlight, and Rey could recognize his scrawniness as the result of being underfed. His wrists stuck out from his sleeves, scarecrow-like, and were bony as the stone effigy’s. His hair was greasy where it stuck out from under his cap—but despite all his dirt he had a sweet face, a trusting face.

“You’re from the orphanage,” Rey said.

“Yes, mum. I weren’t poaching. It’s only there are so many of us, when it’s summer I don’t mind sleeping rough.”

Yes, Rey thought: this would be an appealing place to hide.

“Sharing beds then?” she asked.

“Yes, mum, three and four sometimes. And Jemmy kicks, and we’ve shared a month now.”

Jemmy kicking was not the sort of thing Rey would have learned about, if she had gone to visit the orphanage in ducal splendor. She realized suddenly that he must think she was Bebe, or some other upper servant— _mum,_ not _your grace._

“Milton,” she said, “you aren’t in any trouble. Why don’t we sit down and talk a little about the orphanage? You see, I only just came here…”

* * *

By rights Rey ought to have been exhausted the next day, having stayed up until dawn broke speaking with the unfortunate Milton. Quite the contrary, however: she was energized, and applied herself to the account-books with new fervor. Milton’s intelligence had confirmed her belief that all the problems she had seen and heard about could be solved rather efficiently with the right application of money and man-hours; she only had to find the right investments.

Developing a plan for the improvement of the property could not be accomplished in a day, however, or two days or three: a week passed in exploring the property, getting to know her pretty roan, making regular journeys to Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise to visit with the worthies of the villages. On one such journey she encountered a broken-down ox-cart, and surprised its owner by helping him effect repairs; after that the word in the district was that Her Grace was uncommon clever, if a bit odd. Who ever heard of a duchess who knew what a singletree was, much less how to jury-rig it should it break?

She did not know in detail what her husband did each day. He rode out; he sat in his library and read books; he worked at a desk, though not on the affairs of the estate. He seemed to have no friends in the neighborhood. At dinner they ate in silence, apart from the most everyday pleasantries. He did not come to her at night again.

This eventuality Rey found somewhat surprising, not to say distressing: she did not know whether she would say that she had _enjoyed_ the marital act, but she had not abhorred it, and she had thought that she had given satisfaction. Certainly, as with any other skill, it could not possibly be improved by lack of use. Her mind dwelt a little on the possible reasons for her husband’s distance, but she settled it by determining that he must feel that he had done his duty. Any further tendernesses would be lavished on some mistress. Or perhaps her assurance that he was not unhandsome was, somehow, unwelcome. Should she have pretended to be more blushing, more bashful? —oh, it was stupid to try and second-guess!

It had been a week since her midnight explorations of the old church when Rey had any serious interaction with her husband-the-man, not the duke. She had developed a canal scheme, a very tentative canal scheme, based on the surveyors’ maps of twenty years before; but in order to determine whether it would bear fruit, she had to see the land and water for herself, and so had set herself to tracing the extant waterways on foot, from the very edge of the duke’s property to the grounds of the big house itself. It did not promise to be clean work: the banks of streams are often muddy, and a day or two of unseasonable rain had churned up the ground more than usual. Still Rey did not wish to wait. Though she had asked, Kylo had remained reticent on the question of when they would leave Duke’s Alderaan, so she must make the most of whatever time she had.

Therefore on this particular day Rey had awoken (as was her habit) with the birds and ridden with a groom out to one end of the stream, really more of a small river, on whose bank Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise had been planted, and which burbled so pleasantly through the Capability Brown grounds of Duke’s Alderaan. She sent the horse back to the stables, knotted her skirts so they would be less dirtied, and hoisted her oilcloth-wrapped notebook to her shoulder.

It took several hours to pass through the villages, but Rey was pleased with what she found. The waterway had a good bottom and might easily be enlarged, and on much of its path the land was already cleared. She had noted several places where it might be split in two, so that the pretty parkland would not be marred by a working canal, and determined that when she arrived home she would mark out a potential path on her surveyor’s maps and explore it the following day. Then she would have enough information to present the scheme to Kylo, and (hopefully) to send a missive to Erso & Krennic, the firm which had been so invaluable in developing the canal at Ahch-To Hall.

The remainder of her walk, then, would be devoted to pleasure. Some ways into the grounds Rey found a lovely flat rock overlooking the stream, and opened up her pack to find the squashy fish sandwiches Cook had packed for her luncheon; they were a little abused, but still delicious, and went down gratefully with a bottle of lemonade.

She was considering the possibility of arising again when an animal rustled the bushes. Nothing dangerous lived on the grounds, so she stayed quite still, hoping to draw it out.

There was no need. The rustling grew louder, and a small lithe black figure burst into the clear space with a flurry of barking. A fat wood-grouse took flight from where it had once made a peaceful nest

It took Rey a moment to recognize the little dog that had disturbed her quiet. When she did, she laughed. “Mordred!” His ears perked up. “What ever are you doing here?”

The crumbs of her sandwich sufficed to convince Mordred that she was a friend; soon she was sure he remembered her, if only for the ear-scratches. She supposed he must have been brought up from London to keep his master company, and lost his head in the excitement of the smells and sights of the country, which surely were overwhelming for a little dog. One saucy rabbit would be all that was necessary to lure him away from the safety of the house, and he was built for racing; no one could catch him if he lit off after prey.

What Rey did _not_ suppose was that her husband himself would lead the search for the animal. She discovered this fact when he lurched up out of the brush, rather scratched and muddied, howling “Mordred, you idiot creature, you will be _eaten_ by a _fox_!”

Rey looked skeptically down at the dog. He was very thin, but he was tall at the shoulder, and she did not think a fox could eat him, even if it tried.

“We’re here and all’s well,” she called, to make it easy for Kylo to find them in the thickets. Mordred flung himself at his master, leaping and wriggling in absolute joy.

“Mordred—thank God, you stupid animal, you might have been hurt—what are you doing here?” Kylo asked. Rey was fairly certain that the ‘stupid animal’ was Mordred, but she was not sure to whom the question was meant to apply.

“He was chasing birds,” she said.

“Of course he was. He does not know that he is small and citified. What are _you_ doing here?”

Mordred was enthusiastically washing Kylo’s face with his tongue, and Rey’s whole being was arrested by the vision of her hulking, ridiculous husband, the Dark Duke of the London ballrooms, in thrall to a lapdog.

“I was surveying the land,” she said. Then, “No,” she said, for he had looked at her as though she were about to produce compasses, telescopes, levels, or some other objects of the surveyor’s art, and as though he wondered where she had stashed them, “No, not really surveying. But I needed to understand if the maps you have are terribly far out-of-date. What is Mordred doing here? I believed him to be kept in London.”

Kylo stood up, brushing himself off and running a hand over his face to rid himself of the worst of the slobber. Mordred frisked about his boots, apparently satisfied at the welcome. “Obviously, I caused him to be brought here. Perhaps he will enjoy the countryside. It seems that we are fixed here for a while, after all.”

This information gave Rey some cause to hope. “Then you intend to stay? For some time?”

His face went rather blank. “I was given to understand that you would like to stay.”

My God, Rey realized. When he goes blank it is not because he is cold and detached. He would only like the world to think so. What an addle-pated way to behave! Of _course_ the world thinks him to be a heartless monster if he gives them that impression a-purpose!

“I would like that above all things,” she said, perhaps more enthusiastically than she otherwise might have. “I am so grateful that you have brought Mordred, too. A dog makes a home.”

This did not have the intended effect. Kylo stiffened. “We must return,” he said. “Bullock will wish to know that his newest charge has been found.”

Rey thought that he was absolutely taking pleasure in leading her over the roughest terrain. His coat and breeches were already ruined, after all, not to mention those fine boots (surely product of Hoby’s workshop, and how he could afford them before he had married her Rey would never be able to fathom). If he had hoped to discomfit her in this way, however, he was disappointed. She had dressed for rough walking, and had no qualms even when she tore a rent in her petticoat of at least eight inches.

They were still quite a distance from the manor house: Mordred had bolted far in pursuit of his wood-grouse. After ten minutes of silent walking, Kylo finally said, “Why, may I ask, do you need to verify the surveyors’ maps?”

Rey might have chosen a different moment to explain her plans for the canal to him, but this was obviously the opportunity that presented itself. She took a moment to steady herself, then launched into her explanation. In short, there were other canals nearby that might be extended to run through Kylo’s land; the produce of his farms could be more efficiently distributed via water; but furthermore, a canal would allow for the construction of factories, which would diversify his income sources. Good wool could be had for the production of cloth, for instance.

She had thought he was well in hand, when she mentioned factories; at that the Duke scoffed, however, that he would rather not invite riot onto _his_ lands. She was hard-pressed to explain to him that she did not believe Luddites to be the natural companions of factories, that she understood them to appear in places where skilled labor had been superseded by machinery, and that as manufacture played no very major part in the economies of Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise, she could not imagine such violent reactions to the appearance of industry, particularly not if he were a generous master. “And,” she said, “there is no reason not to be a generous master; for the workers will buy their food and goods here on your lands, and the money will flow back into your coffers in rents.”

Kylo took a dimmer view of human nature than she, and declared that they would start with all good intentions, yet within two years would be lashing children to looms and turning their workers out in slow seasons, just as every other factory did, for otherwise no one would buy their expensive goods. This argument saw them all the way back to the edge of the woods, and Rey was certain she was winning, when the great wreck of the house loomed up before them, Kylo seemed to get a second wind.

“It is nonsensical to bandy this back and forth,” Kylo said, “for to build a factory is to engage in trade—by any measure. I suppose you would not know how fatal this step would be to our dignity. I may tell you, however, that the scent of the shop does not wash off.”

Rey crossed her arms. “If you cannot make Duke’s Alderaan pay for itself, you will lose it,” she said, “and while I will admit I have not finished my examination of the farmlands, I do not believe they can be made to do more than support themselves, and that with a great deal of capital investment.”

“Ahch-To Hall—”

“Will, with careful tending, support itself and us, in no great style; which you would know if you had listened to what Mr. Corm surely told you.” Rey was beginning to be irritated, now, not merely invigorated at an argument with an unexpectedly clever opponent. It was one thing to be concerned about Luddites; that was a real problem, and no one could claim otherwise. It was another thing entirely to be not only ignorant of matters at Duke’s Alderaan but also matters at Ahch-To Hall. She had begun to think that something horrible had happened at Duke’s Alderaan, something that had shaped Kylo into the dark, bitter man he was, and that had made him wish to never see it again; now she thought that that was Gothic nonsense, and perhaps he was simply a layabout.

But Kylo said, “Very well. You seem to know all about it. Shall I turn Mr. Albemarle off and give the business of the estate to you?”

Rey did not quite stop in her tracks, but her mind sputtered to a halt. _This_ she had never expected. At Ahch-To Hall she had worked closely with Mr. Corm, it was true, but it was always understood that managing the land was a man’s job, if any man could be found to do it. Furthermore, she was not merely a woman: she was a _duchess._ After all his talk of setting up a nursery, which had taken Rey some way to thinking he considered her naught but a brood mare, he would suggest that she take on responsibilities far beyond other ladies’?

“I believe Mr. Albemarle is very good, in his own limited way,” she said, primly.

“You would not have me turn him off. You are soft-hearted.”

“No,” she said, “I do not wish to take on the irritating parts of the job—the ordering of seed, the collecting of rents. You had me right. I prefer to be Lady Bountiful.”

Kylo looked up at the ruin of the great house. A bird cried from atop a crumbling wall. “Who, then, shall see your plans through?” He held his hands behind him as he walked and he clutched them together, knuckles white.

Rey could not imagine what emotions Kylo felt at that moment, but she said, “Why, you, Your Grace, if you see fit, with my advice,” and walked on towards the house, not allowing him to respond. Mordred ran after her, barking with pleasure at being a dog and being freed from his long journey and being with his human pack-mates.

* * *

That night Rey sat alone in her bedchamber, staring at the white walls. They were as blank and empty as the walls might be, she imagined, in a convent. Or did that image only occur to her because of the ancient history of this land, the ancient boarded-up church that loomed in her vision of the grounds? In the summer sun Duke’s Alderaan seemed almost an idyll, but at night the walls closed around her and she was enormously aware that she slept in a ruin. If any place were haunted, it would be Duke’s Alderaan.

Almost without thinking she got to her feet and took the rag-curls out of her hair. She unplaited it, letting it fall down her back in a chestnut wave; then she put her hand on the door that communicated between her room and Kylo’s, and then on the knob, and then opened it.

She could not have said what made her do it. She had never sought out his presence before, particularly not after making herself attractive to him, prettying herself up for his appreciation, even in the mildest of manners.

Whatever made her do it, it did not matter, for Kylo was not there.

When Rey had imagined what sort of room Kylo would arrange for himself, she had imagined dark splendor: walls of deep burgundy, furniture of mahogany, perhaps objects that had been with the Dukes of Alderaan since the Conquest. He was the type, she was certain, to install a suit of armor at his door and cross old Crusaders’ swords over the head of his bed. Perhaps there would be an element of Eastern luxury: silks from China, pillows, a stick of incense to sweeten the air. A very affected room, and an old-fashioned one: that was what Kylo would choose.

There _was_ a suit of armor, or a knight’s helmet at least, but it sat on a shelf alone and looked rather forlorn. The room, like hers, had been converted from a sitting-room, but no one had painted its walls, which were hung with a rather sickly yellow paper. The bed was indeed old and massive, too large for the room. She supposed it belonged to the house, and that it was the bed on which his mother and his grandfather had been born—although, no, his mother had not been born at Duke’s Alderaan, she was adopted… in any case it was a horrifying old thing, with Grecian columns of singular disproportion, spherical excrescences breaking their length in half, with huge clusters of carved acanthus at the bottom. Its carven canopy boasted clumsy scrolls and rosettes and an attempt at a Greek key motif where none belonged. Rey supposed it had been taken apart to fit through the door.

As for other furnishings, there were none, apart from a plain chest and an armoire covered in ugly strapwork.

Rey had barely enough time to take all this in when the door to the sitting-room opened and her husband entered.

“My God,” he said.

She stiffened her spine. “Is that the way you greet your wife, sir?”

He looked as though he were about to tell her that it _was_ the way he greeted his wife, and if she did not like it she would have to lump it; but he thought better of it and instead merely responded, “you startled me, madam; you have determined to snoop through my things, I see.”

“No snooping,” she said, pricked, “in fact I have only just entered—thinking that perhaps you would like to see me tonight. I had gotten only so far as to admire the total lack of taste the decoration exhibits.”

She had intended to wound him. Instead, he laughed. “A wreck, isn’t it?”

“The worst,” she said. “How do you ever manage to sleep in that bed?”

“Long habit.”

“But you are never at Duke’s Alderaan.”

“Childhood habit,” he clarified. “My mother wanted no part of it, and as I was the Duke, it was considered to be my duty to sleep in it.”

For a moment Rey envisioned a child asleep in the monstrous thing, a child of about six, his hair perhaps a shade lighter, his face a great deal more peaceful. It would have seemed enormous. “I suppose it might have been fun,” she said, “to have such a great huge mattress on which to sprawl.” And that made her think of the orphanage where boys were several to a bed—of the cot she herself had slept in as a child—but she did not let those thoughts intrude too far.

“It was lonely,” Kylo said.

 _It was lonely._ That was perhaps the clearest statement of Kylo’s feelings that Rey had ever had the privilege to hear; and it was delivered in such an affectedly languid tone that she knew it was very close to his heart indeed. “You had no playmates then?”

He crossed to the bed, sat on it, as though he were tired of looming down at her. “None,” he said. “Surely you have noticed we have had no neighborly visits?”

This had hardly occurred to Rey; she had been so busy with the house, the land, and the tenants that she had not missed company of her own station. Now that he mentioned it, she realized that even at Ahch-To Hall, perched on its inaccessible cliff and a good fifteen miles from the nearest landowner of any size, they would have had some visitors by now.

Kylo looked into Rey’s face, almost on a level with him as he sat, and as she always did she felt pinned, stunned by that steady unreadable regard. “It is not because we were too high-placed for them. But then my mother’s shame was fresh. Who would allow their children to visit such a home?”

“Shame?” Rey could not help herself.

“Her marriage,” Kylo said.

“But she was married; she was not ruined; what shame?”

“Married to a nobody,” Kylo said. “Married to a man who grew up on the docks of Corellia. Married to a smuggler, who drank blue ruin at the dinner-table and cursed in front of the ladies and could not be admitted to even one club. And yet the servants and the villagers would not allow their children to play with me either: I was the Duke and too high for their kind.”

If Rey were a better person her first thoughts would have been for that little boy. They were not. She had attributed being a Duke with almost godlike power, had imagined that with rank all social difficulties would fall away. She had relied on it. If society could truly be so sour and grudging, if even the prospect of a duchy had not reconciled Kylo’s neighbors to him—what hope would Rey ever have to bring about Finn’s success? What of Rose?

“That was—very wrong of them,” Rey said, in some confusion, unable to keep the distress out of her voice. “And they still shun you! In London it seemed that you were the very height of the _ton._ ”

Kylo’s mouth tightened imperceptibly. “They do not wish to shun me,” he said. “I do not receive them. My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.”

“That is a fault indeed,” Rey said, then realised from where the dialogue had come. “You have read Miss Austen’s novel!”

“I wish I had her trick of seeing the ridiculous in this world,” Kylo said, and Rey knew that this too was a confession of sorts.

“Stay by me,” she said, sitting on the bed next to him, “and I will show you how. You see, it begins with the understanding, the deep understanding, that nothing matters.”

He barked a laugh. “That far I can follow.”

“Then,” she said, reprovingly, “one must realize that, if nothing matters, and the world is to be mocked as a bad business, there is yet something in us that seeks meaning; and then one must find it.”

“Ah,” he said, “there’s the element I cannot master.”

“Which?”

He looked at her carefully, as though memorizing her face. He reached to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, tilted her chin up with one clumsy hand. What was he thinking? She was desperate to know, all thoughts of Finn and Rose banished. There was emotion in his face now; his mask was gone; yet she was no better at reading him than she had been when he stayed so practicedly still. “Never mind,” he said, hoarsely.

She was less nervous now, more alive to her senses: she could consciously consider the way he turned to her, the way he tilted his head to kiss her, the way his kisses were deep, drugging, devouring. She ran her hands over his shoulders, still encased in tight black wool, down his lapels, questing beneath the many layers of clothing to find warm flesh: with regret he broke the kiss and stood, and wrestled with his coat, so tight he ripped the seams in his haste to remove it. His waistcoat and shirt went as well, almost in the same moment, revealing a vast expanse of ivory skin.

There was no time to admire it, for he knelt before her instantly, catching her in the same desperate kiss. Rey’s fingers tangled in his hair as he licked his way down her neck to the hollow of her clavicle; she could not speak. This was _not_ as it had been before. Then she had offered herself to his pleasures, but now, as he fitted his mouth to her breast, she knew that it was worship beyond what she had known or imagined.

When he ran his palms down her legs, through the thin fabric of her nightrail, and then slipped beneath its skirt and caressed her ankles, her calves, the backs of her knees, she did not know what he planned, but then in one swift motion he laid her bottom half entirely bare, and bent his head further from her breast to the juncture of her thighs. For a mad moment she thought that he wished to inspect her, to pass judgment somehow, but then he kissed her as deeply there as he had kissed her mouth before, and she was lost, she was lost, she was lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regency romance recommendations! I promised these in the comments and here they are.
> 
>   * You probably expected me to list _Pride and Prejudice_ first. And yeah, that book’s great. But this fanfic isn’t an Austen pastiche! So what IS this fanfic a pastiche of???
>   * Georgette Heyer!!! By far the strongest influence on this fic is _Venetia_ , which has a hero who’s in some ways (but certainly not all) like Kylo and a heroine who’s in some ways (but absolutely not most) like Rey. To catch the tone, I’ve been listening to it on audiobook on repeat. I’m also listening to my two next favorites, _Faro’s Daughter_ and _Bath Tangle_. For some Georgian genderbending delight, a little out of our period, _These Old Shades_ is unbeatable. But there’s dozens of them, and I recommend them all! 
>   * Sheri Cobb South, _The Weaver Takes a Wife_ and its two sequels. If you’re tired of reading about Dukes and want to read about someone unusual for a change—well, these books are for you. They’re “clean” (no explicit sex) but saucy (the characters have a sex life, it’s just off screen).
>   * Candice Hern writes clean Regency romances with a strong sense of time and place. I especially like _Miss Lacey’s Last Fling_ for its portrayal of fashionable London.
>   * Carla Kelly, _Miss Grimsley’s Oxford Career_ (and her other traditional Regency novels). The plot of this particular one is a little bit too modern for historical accuracy (the main character feels a bit liberated for the time period) but I don’t really care - and I bet you won’t either.
>   * Barbara Metzger, _Miss Treadwell’s Talent_ (and others). I think humor is very important in Regencies (though not easy to bring into a Reylo story!) and this one’s a great, fluffy, light farce.
>   * I also like other Regency romance novels that are a little more “untraditional.” In this category, I like Loretta Chase, Lisa Kleypas, Sarah Maclean, and Tessa Dare’s Castles Ever After series. (I’m not a fan of her Spindle Cove series, though who knows, you might like them.)
>   * BONUS FANTASY: The Glamourist Histories series by Mary Robinette Kowal, beginning with _Shades of Milk and Honey_ , are fabulous Regency era stories in which magic is a thing.
>   * BONUS NOT HISTORICAL STORY: _A Civil Campaign_ by Lois McMaster Bujold is a Regency romance in SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE. (OK. Actually on a planet that is not Earth. Still.) (Also it features genetically modified bugs that vomit butter, it’s a delight.) (Really, you ought to read the Vorkosigan novels because they’re just fabulous rollicking tales. Go do yourself a favor. Every single one of them makes me either laugh or cry.)
>   * BONUS NOT ROMANCE STORIES: The Master and Commander series is nautical fiction, not Regency romance, but it’s in generally the same time period and the writing is amazing. If you like rhythms of historical speech, this one’s for you! Plus, Aubrey/Maturin is a truly classic slash pairing, and once you’ve read some of them you can read Astolat’s amazing story [“The World Turned Upside Down,”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/638697) probably my favorite fanfic ever written that’s set in this era.
> 



	13. Chapter 13

Morning light never penetrated to Kylo’s bedchamber; the great headboard and canopy of the ugly ducal bed were placed just so as to block the maximum amount of sun, and there was no shifting it once it had been positioned. Yet he awoke early in any case, and thought he was still dreaming: he was not alone.

There was only one pillow. Rey had commandeered it. Her hair spilled across it, black wriggles in the low light, and she slept with her arms outflung, occupying a vast amount of space. It was fortunate the bed was so large.

_ It was fortunate the bed was so large. _ Kylo marveled at the thought; he had never dreamed he would think such a thought. His pretty wife lying in this old, miserable, ugly, uncomfortable bed! And she had let him possess her, truly possess her, in ways he had not imagined any one but a whore would countenance. But a whore she was not: he was certain of that now that he had felt her tremble at his nearness, seen her awkwardness as she tried to divine where to place her hands, as she tried to understand the way their bodies fit together. Not a whore, nothing like Hux’s vulgar insinuations would have her, but something else. A woman who could meet him passion for passion—at least to a point.

He was not so foolish as to believe she loved him. She had never said so, and never would. He had been watching her carefully since they came to Duke’s Alderaan. He had almost got her measure. She was a pragmatist.

There was no other reason that a person might throw themselves so wholeheartedly into learning an estate that was not truly theirs, that they had been connected with for only days. She could not stand to see the land lying idle; she could not stand to see things broken that might be put right; and all of this because she wanted—what?

Security, he thought. She had been abandoned: very well. She had been left to fend for herself. Now on the marriage-mart she had succeeded in catching a Duke, and a Duke who was intimate with the arbiters of Society, and she believed that would protect her from the vagaries of Fortune. He knew that she had not married him out of pity, and she did not find him ugly, though he thought she must have been dropped on her head as a child to hold such opinions. Perhaps that had made their marriage more convenient for her: to reach such heights otherwise she would have had to have pursued a Royal Duke (as the only unmarried options), but they were getting old and running to fat, and Clarence at least had a passel of hopeful bastards—not very convenient for a future wife.

So. She had chosen him, and now she did not seem to regret it. He had provided her with tasks to occupy her mind, and soon perhaps he would provide her with a child to occupy it further. She had the protection of his name and the honor of his title. As for him...?

Before she had slept, just before, when she still lay with her head at rest on his shoulder, his arms gently encircling her frame, she had mumbled, “You needn’t feel lonely any more, Your Grace.”

Or perhaps she had been asleep already. Perhaps it had been one of those utterances people make from that between-place as they fell into dream. That was surely the case.

She wouldn’t give him his name, even now—but still: he needn’t feel lonely any more.

It was strange to feel an emotion with no seed of violence in it, and yet the emotion itself was as violent as any. He wanted to pull the covers off her and kiss every inch of her sleeping body, to bury himself inside of her so completely that they could never be parted, to see her depraved with passion, to examine her in the sunlight, in the garden, to parade her beauty before every person in the world and say “see, she does anything I say—anything—she is mine!” And yet he wanted to shut her away in a place where she could never be hurt, to cradle her to his chest like a child, to abase himself before her and swear that he was not worthy to touch the hem of her garment.

In short, he was hopelessly besotted, and he was fully aware of it, and he reveled in it and feared it also.

He could not bear to lie beside her sleeping form any longer. He would disturb her if he tried; he would be unable to resist. He crept from her bed—no, his bed—and dressed himself without the aid of his valet, and went out for his customary ride.

* * *

Fighter was in fine form, pleased to be asked to ride fast and far; but Kylo found his direction wandered towards Alderaan Dean and the proposed location of Rey’s manufactories. He indulged himself, let Fighter take the road to the village: there he alit for a moment, entered the King’s Arms (named for a long-ago sovereign who long-ago held a muster there on his vassal’s lands) and drank a half-pint of bitter. He was off again quickly, but not so quickly as to miss the murmur that went round the village when he entered, and the inquisitive eyes of children peeping in at the pub’s windows.

If he had but known it, this brief sojourn went some way to healing the breach between him and many of his tenants; these said they had always  _ wished  _ to feel him a proper lord, but had seen so little of him that they could hardly say; but he was as fine as fivepence in his riding coat and overpaid the tapster in such style that no one could accuse him of being less than lordly. He did not, perhaps, have the same easy way as his wife, but she might be a bit too common (so Gaffer Tomson said) and so it was right that one of them have a sense of their station. Then the farmer whose cart Rey had fixed told Gaffer Tomson that Her Grace was a perfect lady, and what’s better had more common-sense in her little finger than some men of sixty and more; and the disagreement was only patched up by the application of more pints of bitters.

These considerations took place over the course of the day, as the news spread around the village, during which time Kylo was (if  _ they _ had but known it) engaged in work that intimately involved them. He took the most recent estate books to the library and read them; they were nigh-incomprehensible, but it did not take much comprehension to understand that the farms produced much less than they ought. Rey had said that this could be remedied, and that they would still not produce enough to be precisely profitable. So: the canal scheme.

He was not long at the books before he found his attention drifting—not to cards or to sport or to Paphians (he had never been partial to these in any case) but to the past, his least favorite topic. It was unavoidable, or rather, it was unavoidable if he were to subject himself to the affairs of the estate.

His father had never opened these books, he was sure. Lady Leia had. He was seated in the selfsame chair she had used when she immured herself in the library: there were not so very many chairs that had escaped the fire, after all, and no one had seen the sense in purchasing more, when they never entertained. He had been extremely young. They had hired him no nurse, though it would have been usual. Lady Leia had imagined that she would be a doting mother, and that she would raise her son in a natural way, not burdened by the norms of the outer world; and at least until he went to Eton she had been, except for the times she was working on the estate-books, or the times when she and his father were not fighting.

That was the first thing he had learned as a child: it was better for him when his parents fought, for then his mother was all his. When his parents were friends again she would disappear for hours, leaving him to help Cook, or to follow the gameskeeper about on his rounds; but the servants did not know what to do with such a tiny lord, and often the only real company was his dogs. When he was lucky, Mr. Chewbacca came with his father, and would mumble to him in incomprehensible English and carry him around on his shoulders and never tire of playing soldiers-and-sailors; but this was not a frequent occurrence.

It was not those early memories of his mother in the library that stung but the later ones. When he was sent to Eton he had discovered another world: a world of boys who had had rather different upbringings than he did. He learned, from them, that his mother was a whore, and his father was a bastard, and he (for all he was a Duke) was an ugly little scrub.

These facts were utterly unbelievable, and yet they fit so perfectly with his experiences of the world that he could not dismiss them. This,  _ this _ was why he had no playmates; this was why his mother disappeared, doing something with his father that he knew now was filthy; this was why he sensed always a certain reluctance from his father, a certain distance. He could not articulate these thoughts, except in retrospect, of course: it was not possible for a boy of seven, even an intelligent, sensitive boy such as Ben Solo had been. And yet he had thought them nonetheless.

The bad memories of the library began on his first holiday home from Eton. His father was gone. It was not the first time, and it was not the last time, but it had been for a long time, longer than he realized at first. His mother was distracted, and she had begun work on a book.

He had thought at first that he would tell her about what had happened at school, about the misery it had turned out to be, but he had not known how to write it in a letter: letters were for routine expressions, not truth-telling. This he understood even at the tender age of seven. So he had thought next that he would tell her when he returned for his holiday, but in the actual event their meeting was not at all what he had imagined.

She had not come to gather him from school, but had sent a strange lady. This was Nurse. Despite her title she was not a maternal woman: she was small and birdlike and anxious. She had some hard-luck story that he learned, in dribs and drabs, from the other servants over the course of the holiday, and his mother had taken pity on her. He felt he was too old for a nurse, much too old, but he was too polite to say so to her face; the journey was largely silent.

At home he found his mother in the library. She was at work on something, not the estate-books; it was to be her first great political treatise, he would later learn, and she had been in London developing it. She greeted him with tears and pleasure, and told him she was very proud of his progress at school, which was excellent. Looking into her dear face, so happy to see him, he found he could not bear to tell her the awful things the boys had said about her. He must have seemed sullen, for she asked him what was the matter; he said it was nothing, or made up some plausible excuse, and she let it go at that.

This interaction was almost the last happy memory he had of Duke’s Alderaan. The boys at Eton may have been cruel, yet he found it was preferable to be teased and tormented and even beaten than it was to be shunned. In any case he began to realize he would not be beaten for very much longer: that holiday he had had a growth spurt, and soon was quite the tallest boy in his year.

His mother never again seemed to emerge from the library. She believed his lies about how happy he was at school; and he could not help but resent the fact that she did not divine the truth, that she did not know her own reputation. She had never explained it to him; she had never even told him about his grandfather’s ruin and disgrace, only that he had died shortly after Duke’s Alderaan had burned down.

Therefore he learned the story of these events from the gossip. Later he would discover that gossips often include falsehoods in their tales; as an adult he would come to know that (for example) the old Duke had not died of a stroke when his mother ran away with his father, and that his father had not set the manor house ablaze in a drunken rage (in fact, despite his low-class preference for blue ruin, Mr. Solo was not a notable tippler). These were the phantasies of a scandalized Society. In the greenness of youth, however, Kylo had no way to determine the degree of their veracity.

And it was easy for him then to hate his father. Mr. Solo came to see him at school once, and Kylo squirmed at his father’s poor dress, at his ill manners. Mr. Solo was frequently at sea, and sent letters but occasionally: from these Kylo learned that, in possession of a letter of marque, he had laid off the coast of Sierra Leone for six months hunting slave-trading vessels. Another boy might have found this proof that his father was not only a romantic, swashbuckling figure but also brave and righteous; to Kylo it only illustrated that he was mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

It was not until Kylo was sixteen, however, that the tie was finally severed. At school he had long ago overcome his bullies, mostly by sheer size and force of will, and now ruled over them with an iron fist; he had forbade all mention of his parents, and cultivated Armitage Hux as his right-hand man, and gathered around him such other boys as recognized a natural leader. In recent years he had become volatile, which was only to be expected in a young man reaching his maturity; he had learned to restrain himself before his elders, however, realizing that he had not yet entered into the full power that he would command once he came of age. In this he was advised by Lady Snoke, a widow of advanced years who was instrumental in the running of the school; she had taken a shine to him early in his career there, and supported him throughout, when his own mother was too busy with her work.

On that dismald day he and both his parents were, for once, at Duke’s Alderaan. He did not like it: he had been to visit Hux’s family, and now recognized that even the parts that remained standing were poky, old-fashioned, filled with shabby furniture and faded paint. Yet he had withheld his judgment for his mother’s sake, and the visit had begun pleasantly enough.

Then he had the misfortune to return home early from a jaunt to the bookshop at Alderaan Dean. He had mounted the stairs to the bedchambers, thinking to change clothes, and had heard his parents fighting. He paused on the step: he considered absenting himself from the scene: then he heard something break, and he pounded upwards to Lady Leia’s rescue.

It had not, in point of fact, been Mr. Solo who had broken the vase. Lady Leia had done so, in the act of throwing it inaccurately at her husband’s head. The argument was about Mr. Solo’s business dealings, which had not prospered, even though a smuggler in wartime  _ ought _ to make a pretty penny; midnight meetings had been missed, shipments seized by customs inspectors, and in one memorable case drunk by a rowdy and inexperienced crew. These foibles might have been forgiven, if Mr. Solo had not come back to London and demanded why Lady Leia had been spending time with such a rackety crowd, and becoming absolutely infamous as a political spider; he declared that he had not known it was possible for a girl to be both a bluestocking  _ and _ a lightskirt, to which she responded that she did not tax him with any exotic maidens he might meet on his journeys, and said that in any case she was as faithful as a dog. This declaration had led her husband, naturally, to reflections on the nature of  _ bitches _ ; and so the fight had begun in earnest.

Under normal circumstances the thing might have blown itself out. There was no denying that Lady Leia and Mr. Solo loved each other, for all their differences, and they were accustomed to such arguments on a semi-regular basis, which always ended in one of two ways—a long sea-cruise for Mr. Solo, or a rapturous reconciliation. It was the only area in which Lady Leia allowed her heart and her feminine emotions, not her head and its mannish logic, to hold precedence.

This time, however, young Ben’s interference changed all that. He barged in, placed himself between his parents, and challenged his father to fight: when the challenge was not accepted, he held forth on the absolute indignity of Mr. Solo’s behavior; and when  _ that _ theme had been exhausted, he demanded an apology.

Here his mother misstepped. She had not spent much time with him of late, and did not know the young man he had grown to be as well as she had known the affectionate child tied to her apron-strings. She came it rather high with him, telling him that he had no business telling his father what to do, and that if anyone was owed an apology, it was Mr. Solo.

This loosed the flood. Kylo was enraged as only a sixteen-year-old can be, full of self-importance, desiring to be seen as an adult, and longing for his mother’s admiration and his father’s respect. He could not longer keep his knowledge to himself. He told Lady Leia of her every peccadillo, informed her that though  _ she _ had always been a loose screw,  _ he _ did not intend to follow her example, and in his anger used several choice terms that were not usually spoken in front of well-bred ladies.

That was the end of happy family life at Duke’s Alderaan, or at the London townhouse, or anywhere. The very devil of it was that the instant Kylo had spoken, when he saw his mother’s face crumple, he had felt sick inside, guilty, as though he had killed something innocent and defenseless (though she was  _ not  _ defenseless; she was quite the most redoubtable matron in England). He had desired only to disappear. But he was determined to be known as a truth-teller, a man of his word, a person with strength of conviction: so he carried on, and so he rejected every overture to heal the breach thereafter. 

The library. The chair on which his mother sat. These things could not help but recall to him the miseries of the past. Though he was no longer a callow youth, prone to fits of dramatics, Kylo felt nonetheless that the only way to excise the stain from his soul—the stain of Ben, that miserable creature who no one wanted and who hurt every thing he loved—was to tear the entire structure down, raze it to the foundations, and burn the library and the chair and every other object in it.

But he was not going to do that, he realized. Or—he might still. But he would not destroy the grounds and villages with it, not even through benign neglect. Rey had asked him not to, and he had somehow managed not to chase Rey away yet, though he did not quite know how he had managed it.

Better men than he had been ruined by canal schemes gone awry: they were a chancy business which few understood quite perfectly, and it was easy to be caught by a swindler.  _ Rey _ could not be out to swindle him: yet he ought not agree to build any such thingnewfangled thing on the advice of a girl barely out of the schoolroom. A canal and a factory, to boot! He ought to engage his man of business directly, to hire someone better than Mr. Albemarle, to begin taking his estate as seriously as befit a man of his standing. He ought, he ought, he ought. But Rey was the only reason he had considered the scheme in the first place. Her word would be good enough for him. And if it failed? He could hardly be worse off than before he had married her. They could always rusticate at Ahch-To Hall.

Kylo took up pen and paper and began to compose a letter to Erso & Krennic, the firm that had built the earliest canals in the north of England. They had been in disgrace for some time, when one of their schemes had been found to have a fatal flaw; the fault had been attributed to Mr. Erso, for by that time old Mr. Krennic had been knighted and set himself up as a gentleman. Rey, however, swore that they had completed many smaller projects since then, and that they were reliable, whatever reputation might say, and although the elder Mr. Krennic had long ago died and the heir remained only a silent partner. Their fees for the Ahch-To Hall project had been exceedingly reasonable, because of their situation.

So. A canal. Rey’s money put to use—for that and, perhaps, for repairs to the tenants’ cottages. He ought to see the tenants’ cottages, he supposed, before he ordered repairs. That meant work that he had long avoided, encounters with people he did not wish to see. He would perhaps have to remain all through the hunting season, in order to put the estate in order. 

What would Lady Snoke think of this change of heart, he wondered? She had remained tactfully silent on the issue of his lands, declaring that such concerns were the rightful demesne of the stronger sex. She would, perhaps, be pleased to know that he did not intend to run himself entirely to ruin, and that he would be able to redeem his vowels....

Kylo’s thoughts were frequently unpleasant, so it was not that he shied away from the subject of his debts because it was distasteful. But he did not want to consider it, and he was well-practiced in ignoring things he did not want to consider: so he cut the line of thought and distracted himself by signing his name at the bottom of the letter rather more floridly than usual.

Perhaps he ought to have consulted with Rey on the composition of the missive, he wondered? —No. She had said that she did not wish to be in charge of the scheme. But she would be pleased to know he had written it, perhaps would like to see it before it was sent; he would give it to her at supper-time, and enjoy watching her lovely smile. His little pragmatist! He had chosen a wife well. It would be comfortable to live with someone who understood her own needs, and the land’s, and whose behavior was predictable. No milk-and-water misses still discovering their own minds! Perhaps, in time, they might even convince Lady Snoke that Rey did not need to be rusticated, that she could take her proper place as a leading figure of Society. He could imagine Rey giving political dinner-parties: she would charm Tory and Whig alike. He could imagine a ball, perhaps, at the townhouse, once Duke’s Alderaan was profitable again: a ball of fabulous proportions, with champagne flowing freely and ices in every hand, Prinny in attendance, and perhaps even some of Rey’s more conventional friends, to add interest to what might otherwise be another stifling  _ ton _ party…

He would simply need to appeal to Rey’s pragmatism. If she did not yet see the world his way, she would: he would show her. He had been wrong to abandon his properties, yes, he saw that now, through her eyes; she would see that by making herself acceptable to Society, she would reap great rewards, and so all would be well.

All would be well. He would make it all be well. He did not have to be lonely any more: that was the main thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please welcome to the beta team (drumroll) Fandomme!
> 
> You may also notice we now have a chapter count. I'm not certain it's 'firm' but I am sure there are at least that many! So I guess we're almost halfway there... yow!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to adding a new chapter this week, I've gone back and made a few edits to earlier chapters so that Rey's age works out right throughout the story. Nothing that should alter the plot or emotional arc, though!
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: This chapter includes a graphic description of a fatal horse-riding accident. If you do not want to read it, skip the section between the third and fourth horizontal lines. You will miss a little of Kylo's perspective, but nothing that will ruin the story for you.

When letters began to trickle in from London, and from the country estates of various friends Rey had made, she was pleased to be able to answer them in good spirits, reporting that life with her husband was nowhere near the trial some might have imagined it to be.

Lady Leia was the first to write, unsurprisingly: she did not include a message for her son, also unsurprisingly. For the time being she intended to remain fixed in the capital, however noisy, hot and dirty it might become; there was some possibility however that, now that Canning had returned to England from his station as ambassador to Portugal… Here she filled two crossed pages with details of the political on-dit, which Rey could scarcely follow. It was clear that, with the conclusion of hostilities with France, Leia was in her element.

Admiral Ackbar, on the other hand, was quite cast down: he did not know what the end of the war would mean for his favorites among the sailors, especially Lieutenant Dameron, who would now be completely reliant on patronage for another ship. Ackbar could do only so much, being but one of many admirals in the Fleet, and… Rey could see how he and Lady Leia were such great friends: when in the midst of a knotty problem they both had a tendency, charming in some contexts and lamentable in others, to describe the workings of their mind in detail. Rey responded as best she could, and expressed her very great hope that Lieutenant Dameron might get a ship soon.

Dameron’s letter, however, said nothing of his career. It was short and written in an ill hand, telling her that London had been dashed slow since she’d gone away, that he was quite rolled-up, but that he and Finn had found a nice little place to stay ‘within striking-distance of La Tico.’ They were ‘marvelous friends—never a better—call him  _ brother  _ and wear each other’s coats—united in all things—bless you for furthring the act’nce.’ He gave their new direction.

Finn’s letter was enclosed with Lieutenant Dameron’s, and while it had poorer grammar and nearly incomprehensible spelling, it was written painstakingly clearly and was quite five times the length. Rey smiled to see it and might have wept over it had she been in poorer spirits: it was clear that her dear Captain Storm had been applying himself to his books, working to become a proper gentleman. He asked politely that she have Ren frank any letters, or send them post paid, for they were living in very straitened circumstances, according to Lieutenant Dameron; he did not need to say that in his mind, they were more than comfortable living in their bachelor way.

They were banned from seeing Rose, but had nevertheless rented a cottage near her family’s estate, so that they might at least encounter her at a public assembly, and so that they could get out of the Metropolis; fortunately Dameron had grown up nearby, and therefore had a very plausible excuse for removing to that county in particular. Dameron’s family had been all that was kind to him despite his bad name in London. Finn had long ago ceased to be ashamed of his appearance at Almack’s, and had grown angry instead at the ridiculous rules that held sway there. It was easy to see that no one liked going there: yet everyone did, only because it was the “done thing.” Well, he said, I may not do the done thing, and what I do will become my done thing!

This slightly incoherent statement cheered Rey immensely: it sounded like the old Finn, who had protected her from all comers. He was gaining confidence, she supposed; she only hoped that he would not find some way to further reduce his chances at winning fair Rose’s hand. When she composed her letter back, she threw out quite four drafts before striking the right balance. The problem was that Rey was of two minds: she did not like Society’s dictates, found them every ounce as ridiculous as Finn had said, yet she was becoming exquisitely aware of how important it could be to follow them—and, after all, Finn did still want to win Rose’s parents over, did he not?

In the end Rey’s replies to all her letters were mostly full of descriptions of Duke’s Alderaan, praise for the staff, and details of her schemes to improve it. The simple act of writing them encouraged her to see her life in the most positive light, and she was brought even more in harmony with her husband when he franked each cover with no argument. He did not even remark on her correspondence with Finn and Poe.

* * *

It took longer for Rey to receive a letter from Rose than from any one else, a fact which she noticed only after she had sent all her replies in a lump. The truth was that for long stretches Rey now found herself engaged in the labor of making Kylo’s estates work again: she was studying the disposition of land and writing letters to men of business and convincing farmers to try, just try this new method of harvesting this year. Her Sundays were taken up first by church at Alderaan Dean, and then visits to the orphanage at Alderaan Rise, so that she scarcely had a moment to rest even on the Lord’s day. And her nights, of course, were taken up by her husband.

Her husband! He was cold and restrained as ever during the days: there had been no flashes of anger, nor moments of insight into his mind. Over time she learned that he had been used to spend his days at sport, or in responding to political letters from other members of the Houses of Parliament; in that way he was very much like his mother, although he would never admit it. He would take a lap-desk out-of-doors and work there; when his work became dull he would summon Bullock, who was always willing to indulge him in a round of fisticuffs.

This habit had been quite a surprise to Rey, when she had first discovered it. Capability Brown had designed a clearing in the woods only steps away from the house’s formal gardens, yet in summertime rendered thoroughly invisible from the house by masses of foliage; this was Kylo’s retreat, and his training-ground. She had been walking past quite by accident one day and heard voices raised, and Mordred barking: her investigation revealed her husband and the gameskeeper stripped to the waist, Kylo’s mouth bloodied. The argument taking place was over whether Bullock would apologize or not: he was insisting, and Kylo was insisting that none was necessary. Mordred could not decide if the entire thing was great fun or a great insult to his master—possibly he thought it was both.

She was a little shocked in herself to find that, far from caring about the argument or its subject, she was solely struck by the beauty of her husband’s form. It was not so much that she had not been conscious of it before: indeed, she had observed it the first time she met him, and had grown passing familiar with it in recent days. But she saw his naked form in candlelight alone; she had touched his skin but had not until this moment observed that it was gaining a golden glow from hours spent out-of-doors. The darkness obscured the strange perfection of that skin, smooth as a child’s, unbroken by the moles that spattered his face—but not unmarred.

Lord Alderaan had lived an easy life, she had thought. Perhaps it was so: but he had the sort of porcelain complexion that scarred easily and deeply. He had been cut thousands of little times, perhaps by the end of a whip or perhaps by an opponent’s dueling-sword; accidents, she knew, did happen, and many of the scars had faded to silvery-grey lines. There was one scar, however, that was red and fierce: a line down his neck and chest, bisecting his left breast to the nipple. She had seen it before, but it had never seemed so raw as in this moment.

It was this scar that he reflexively covered, when he realized he was observed, and she knew suddenly that he had received it in his duel with his father—duel or ill-fated game, she hardly knew which any more. There was no other time he might have received such a mark; there was no other reason for him to wish to hide it.

Rey had fled back to the house in some confusion. They had not spoken of her spying; and that was the afternoon that Rose’s letter finally came.

It was not a comfortable letter. It started off cold and formal, and Rey was certain that Mrs. Tico had decreed that she would read all her daughter’s correspondence, to ensure it was appropriate to a girl of her age and station; but after the first paragraph it became friendlier, so perhaps it was merely that her mother had been reading over her shoulder for a time. London had been quite dull after Rey left. No, dull was not the word to describe it: it had been a horror.

Rose had always been something of a wallflower, but she wrote that she had not stood up more than twice after Rey left, and both times with men she was certain Lieutenant Dameron had sent to take pity on her. Kaydel Ko Connix would have supported her, she was certain, but in her mother’s passion for propriety Kaydel was considered too fast to be an appropriate companion for a young girl. She was to remain tied to her mother’s apron-strings at all times; and yet she was roundly scolded for failing to secure a husband, and she knew there was not likely to be a second Season for her.

This was not so bad, Rose wrote: she had taken so long to write because they had determined to return to —shire, where she would have to find a beau amongst the landowners there. And to tell the truth, there were nice young men in the district; or, she should say, worthy young men: one in particular had long aspired to her hand, and she was told that he was a most estimable person, and quite the most knowledgeable of farming for miles, and that though his estates were smaller even than her parents’ she would never want if she were his wife. Her time with Lieutenant Dameron and Captain Storm dancing attendance on her would be preserved in ‘the tablets of her memorie’ as a sort of beautiful dream.

This all Rose wrote with a sort of wry resignation. Rey knew that she was trying her very hardest to remain cheerful, and to laugh at her situation: Rose had in spades that virtue of gentle self-mockery which Kylo so lacked. But it made Rey sad, for every line made clear that Rose had no sense of her own worth, and only laughed so as not to cry.

The response had to be carefully composed, and Rey did not find her poor wit up to the task. She had learnt to write late, and could never be quite sure of every spelling, especially when she used words outside the common way; though her quality of thought was quite as good as any one else’s, her quality of expression did not have the depth that a child brought up on books’ would. She lacked subtlety, she was certain.

For once here was a skill (besides the manly arts shooting and fighting) in which Lord Alderaan exceeded Rey, but she could not ask for his assistance. The thought did occur to her; she wondered if it would not flatter him to be needed, but then imagined laying Rose’s poor concerns bare to the Dark Duke, and knew that she could not use her friend so.

Instead Rey filled her letter with reminiscences of the times Rose had helped her, wishes for her friend to be near, and asked her what to do about innumerable little village conundrums—though Rey did not suppose Rose had much experience with the problems of a ducal estate, it would hardly hurt for her to be distracted by the question of how best to help a former maid-of-all-work whose farmer husband had gone missing under the influence of drink and might or might not intend to abandon their cottage. Rey could think of at least three solutions, only one of which depended on the lout being found; she laid them before her friend’s wisdom and hoped that this expression of faith and trust in Rose’s good sense would have some positive effect.

* * *

Her correspondence finished, Rey found herself filled with restlessness. There was always more to do; yet she did not think that she could submit herself to Cook’s endless questions about the still-room, or Mrs. Dodd’s kindly fussing about furniture-polish. Though it was coming on sunset, she determined to ride out.

She had never truly tested the roan’s paces, going mostly as she did to the villages and back; to-day she determined on a rougher ride, over the grounds and through the woods. Her horse answered beautifully. She had never ridden a mount with more heart; though she was not accounted a great rider, she found herself taking hedges and ditches both that she would have quailed to try under other circumstances. They dealt together better than Rey could have imagined. Beneath that sleek grey-black body there were enormous muscles, straining valiantly to attack each obstacle; and by the time the house hove back into view, Rey had determined that her mount’s name was Force, for the unremitting determination she showed when asked.

It was childish, perhaps, for her to return to Duke’s Alderaan at quite such a gallop, and childish for her to take Force over the flower-beds and box-hedges that had once made up the formal garden; but the garden was ruined already, and Rey was not ready to let her treat of a ride end just yet. It was just her luck that as she sailed over the final check, letting out a little squeal of delight, she found that her husband was standing outside the stables and watching her progress.

She could tell that he was angry from the set of his shoulders and the line of his spine, but she had not known quite how angry until she came close enough to see his hard, cold, set face. At first she did not understand why; then it began to dawn on her that perhaps seeing her jump her horse was not quite what he liked.

“You were riding astride,” was what he said, however.

“Yes, and how else was I to take the hedges? For I am not afraid to tell you that while I can ride aside, it is not one of my more notable skills.”

“You should not be taking the hedges at all,” he said, lifting her down from her horse and banishing it and the groom from their presence. “You should not be riding alone; you should not be riding so fast; and you should certainly not be jumping your horse when you might be—“

He glanced around to make sure that the groom had gone round the corner. He had; they were quite alone. She regretted that she had let him remove her from her horse. It was extremely vexing to have to look up at him when he was being so intolerable. It reminded her that for all they had recently been getting on, he did not share any of her ethics, and was abominably concerned with what was proper for a lady to do or not do.

Then she realized how his sentence must have been intended to end, and laughed. “You mean that I might be increasing? But how stupid, when you must know that there is no sign of that, for I told you so.”

At this statement Kylo’s ivory skin turned nearly purple, and he said, “It is hardly conventional—“

“Damn the convention,” Rey said, “it concerns you nearly as closely as it does me; and you cannot be innocent of what the signs are, for I am told that every man of your age has kept at least one mistress in his time, and you never do anything that is not perfectly appropriate to your age and station.”

This was not perhaps strictly accurate: if Kylo had been such a paragon as that, he would never have gained the sobriquet of ‘Dark Duke.’ It hit close enough to the mark, however, that he shook his head as though to brush the accusation off.

“Have I not been indulgent?” he asked, stepping towards her in what might have been a menacing way.

She had to allow that he had; certainly she had not expected him to alter his way of life to accord with her opinions on how a Duke ought to conduct himself, but he had, and furthermore had allowed her to enter fully into the sort of work she liked best. He had not been a tyrant.

“Have I not been kind?”

This she could not stomach, however much he tried to intimidate her. “ _ Kindness _ is generally considered the minimal requirement in a husband, my lord,” she said, refusing to give him his name. “ _ Lovingness _ is more usual in these days, as matches are more rarely arranged, I feel; and  _ devotion _ is most to be desired.”

It was not until the words had fallen from her lips that she noticed her tone of mild resentment. Did she resent him? For what? For not being her love-match? If it were so—and she had to admit she did not know her own mind—she was the stupidest girl in England. She had married him knowing very well that they were both being forced into it, and it had answered far better than she had had any reason to hope.

Desiring no further discussion on this front, which could only lead to arguments, Rey took the prudent course and went into the stables, breathing in the familiar scents of hay and horses. Force’s stall was empty—the groom would have to walk her at least a mile to cool her down. Rey went in anyway, noticing that the stall was clean, fidgeting with the implements on the wall, twitching a blanket straight.

Kylo had followed her. Fighter greeted him with a nicker from the next stall over, but he did not pay attention, following Rey into the tight box of the stall. His black suit, inappropriate for the setting, made him a great dark mass crowding her in.

“You may expect whatever you like in a husband,” he said. “Whether I fulfill it or not, your feelings are your own. But a wife’s duty is to be decorous—ladylike—cautious—” He was as stern as a parson, but no parson had ever taken such brazen advantage of his size to intimidate.

Rey felt the familiar ringing in her ears, knew that she was becoming quite, quite angry with him, and that she might say anything in that state. He might be the best husband in the world, and he would still be in the wrong to tell her she might not ride her own horse in any way she might chuse. And he was not the best husband in the world: no one could say so… 

Before Rey could speak, however, Kylo had seized her by the shoulders and made her look at him, and said, “you might have been killed,” and at first the words rang in her ears like everything else, and then quite suddenly they did not, for they had been said in just such a tone as made her understand that this was real concern. Those eyes, so dark as to seem black, were fearful.

“People do not get killed riding over little hedges like that,” Rey said, although she knew it was not strictly and entirely true.

“They do,” he said, “and they have, here on these lands, and for a moment I thought—“ he stopped speaking and swallowed and Rey realized, Lord, he has seen it happen.

“You needn’t tell me about it now,” she said, feeling her back against the wooden wall of the box. He had pushed her absolutely into the corner. “Was it—did you know them very well?”

“No,” he said, but his tone was quite different now that he had finally said what he meant, and his gaze distant, remembering, perhaps. “No, I did not. It was one of Father’s friends. How funny that I can recall it so clearly. None of them were capable of riding in the least, and yet they would always try, as though Father living at a great house required his friends to ride to hounds. I daresay you wondered why I never hunt here.”

“I had not,” Rey admitted. “I had not thought of it at all.” But of course the lands would be lovely for hunting; and if he had chosen, he might have eschewed the cost of a hunting box entirely and joined several very famous hunts directly from Duke’s Alderaan.

“Of course I did not—it does not stop me from riding out,” Kylo said quickly, as though he were afraid Rey might think him chicken-hearted. 

“You’re no coward—” Rey began; but she was interrupted with “I could not lose  _ you _ ,” and the conversation was put to an end by her husband’s mouth crushing hers in a passionate kiss.

* * *

When Kylo saw the horse vaulting the hedges, heard its rider whooping wildly as it soared, he froze.

If his mother’s shade visited him in the library he ought to have realized that he would be safe nowhere on the estate; and here was Rey—for some part of his mind knew it must be Rey, riding the blue roan he had never properly given her—playing the part of a man who had died twenty-five years ago.

Rage boiled in him, unwonted, and though in some part of his mind he realized that he was not angry but frightened he did not  _ care. _ To ride astride was ridiculous for any lady; if she had ridden sidesaddle, she might not have cut quite that perfect figure, just precisely angled as Mr. Branon had been when he took the ditch that cost him and his horse their lives. If she had not jumped her horse at all, she would not have been in danger; and so—

He hardly heard their conversation as he spoke to her, spoke  _ at _ her. He heard instead the hollow thud and the sick squish of Mr. Branon’s skull colliding with a rock. He heard the horse screaming, its legs broken. It had seemed to go on for ever until his mother had rushed from the house, taken a gun out of his father’s numb hands, and shot the beast through the head.

When Rey fled into the stables he realized he had angered her, but he did not care: others might love with such little power that they would acquiesce to the loved one’s requests, let them run wild: he was not so weak! Better for her to be angry with him and safe, and obedient, than for her to think him an amiable fellow—

“You might have been killed,” he told her, and finally it seemed that she heard him, that she had some fractional understanding of the horror of a skull colliding with a rock, that she had some faint notion that so easily it might have been her own skull.

They spoke; she said words and he answered, but now he was caught in considering her, this precious creature that had come to live with him: the curve of her neck, the shell of her ear, that wide mouth that smiled so easily. Just now she was concerned: concerned not for herself but for him, which made him want to laugh and cry both. She was his, she was whole, she was safe, and they were alone, and he wanted her desperately.

Wanted her—and, he was sure, could have her.

He delighted in kissing her. She was hardly comparable to the pillow-soft birds of paradise he had occasionally entertained in his youth; she was nothing like the milk-and-water misses who had tried to catch him on the Marriage Mart. Her lips were sweet but not soft. She was all teeth and tongue, muscle and sinew, smaller than him but infinitely fiercer.

Rey did not fight him even for a second, though, and he delighted in that too, in the way that she so wantonly tipped her face up to his, the way she curled those thin strong arms around his neck—Lord, the way she pressed her body against his, standing on tip-toes, letting her thighs and belly connect with his legs and hips, somehow even more tantalizing through the fabric of her riding habit. He wished it to the Devil, had a frantic vision of her mother-naked and spread starfish-wide on the floor of the barn, and knew that he was not going to wait and swive his wife at the appropriately decorous time. He not only could have her: he would.

The groom would return with the horse at any moment. There was no time for kissing and petting, even if Kylo could have been patient. He rucked Rey’s skirts up around her waist and felt her fingers at the buttons of his breeches and nearly spilled there, realizing that it was not only his lust that was monstrous here, that she was as lost in desire as he.

Somehow it was that intoxicating thought that brought him to release even more than the sweet slick of her cunny, hot and tight and desperately ready for him. It was the look on that precious delicate face, her brow wrinkled in concentration, then relaxing in ecstasy when he was buried as deep inside her body as it was possible to be. It was the sounds she made, whimpers that he knew now were of pleasure not of pain; it was the way she curled her leg around his back, the way she rocked up and down, the way she so thoroughly was there with him, was joined with him, was working with him to effect that sweet warm overwhelming—

Presently he realized that the only thing holding Rey up was the pressure of his body against hers, her legs holding tight about his waist, and that there was an absolute bolster of fabric between them: the skirt of her riding habit. 

There could be no getting around the awkwardness of trying to straighten themselves up enough to pass muster with any servants. It was hopeless, of course, but it was not possible to not at least try.

And yet for once awkwardness did not bother Kylo. Rey was safe; she was his; she had understood his feelings, and had promised (he thought) not to endanger herself again. It was enough. It was more than enough.

* * *

Rey felt—the word, she supposed, must be  _ titillated _ ; the idea of copulating with her husband in a stable had never once occurred to her and yet when the thing began to happen she was absolutely all for it, one hundred per cent, yes  _ please. _

It was remarkable how beautiful her husband was, how good he made her feel when they were together, in that animal act, but also (occasionally) when their minds were both bent on some problem of the estate. Remarkable, yet somehow hollow. This was the resentfulness, she realized. 

Lord Alderaan did not care, in particular, whether she were titillated by being tumbled in the stables like a milkmaid. He liked it better if she was: of that she had no doubt. But if she did not like it he would have done it anyway. When he looked at her he looked covetously. He was angry when she jumped her horse, certainly: he had reason to be: but he was angry because, just as she had imagined before they went to bed together, she was his expensive toy.

Lord, it was queer how the marriage-bed sapped your wits! For there were moments when she thought he loved her; and then she came to herself again and knew that he did not, he only owned her. He was a man full of emotions, sure: anger, and sadness, and fear, and all the dark things that led people into Perdition.

Well, it might have been worse. She had him in body if not in spirit: and in some wise she had him in spirit, for covetousness was a kind of selfish love. They made the appearance of a honeymooning couple of lovebirds: when Bebe saw her mistress’s dress all roughed-up from the barn stall, her hair an absolute bird’s nest, she had to hid her smile behind her hand. And in some things, the appearance was quite as good as the reality: that was something Rey had learned in London.


	15. Chapter 15

As the days stretched into weeks Rey found herself becoming thoroughly enmeshed in the web of relationships that composed the people of Alderaan. Kylo kept himself a little apart, but he too was surely becoming entangled: he found himself at the King’s Arms more than once and came to greet the tapster by name, found himself listening to what Mr. Featherstonehaugh had to say about the taxation of the church (and determining to put forth some of that worthy rector’s opinions to his fellows in the House of Lords, during the next session), found himself walking his land in a way he had not done since he was a child and learning the changes that had been made to it in the intervening years.

Rey observed this alteration in Kylo’s character with some complacency, but had not time to think hard about it. She was too busy herself. They received no immediate reply from Krennic & Erso, but there was plenty to be done (she knew) before they could properly be engaged. The villages must be prepared for the idea of change, and she was slowly working towards that goal.

In the process she had become friendly with Mr. Reffe, the priest at Alderaan Rise, for she went to visit the orphanage on a regular basis, and had even employed two of the older boys to help Mrs. Dodd try to restore another of the great house’s rooms. They spoke mostly of the children; Rey could not always enter into their feelings, as they usually had been old enough to properly remember their parents and usually had come from the countryside not the city, but nevertheless she felt a kinship with them, and Mr. Reffe sometimes brought their knotty little interpersonal problems to her for advice.

In these long, lovely end-of-summer days she thought regularly of Luke. He would have enjoyed seeing her in this role, been pleased to discover that her closest friends were dedicated churchmen (for neither Reffe nor Featherstonehaugh were the sort of man who took the cloth only for the sake of a living they had been promised). He would have liked that she had grown so absorbed in her work that she even lost her appetite at times—he had always thought she was a little glutton, courtesy her years of deprivation. He would have approved of her work at the orphanage and, she thought, enjoyed the idea of employing Krennic & Erso once more to bring life to a sadly neglected estate.

Of course he would not have put it that way. Luke had been increasingly cantankerous as he grew older; she envisioned how he had snorted when she proposed that  _ she _ might be able to repair a steam engine as well as any engineer. He had snorted, but he had not prevented her from trying, and when she proved to be right, he had granted her a rare and brilliant smile.

Luke was an eccentric, that was the truth: Rey had not known it when she went to live with him, having no one to compare him to, but how that she had spent time in London she perceived the true facts of the matter. He wore his coats large and shabby; he dressed in the same pale grey whereever he was; he never rode to the hunt; he eschewed church in favor of private meditations, and somehow the priest nearest Ahch-To Hall had nothing to say to this; and he selected an orphan girl-child to be his heir.

Nevertheless, he had taught her everything, and she was grateful. She meditated on this as, with the help of Cook, she packed a hamper for a tenant: Becky Tomson, youngest grand-daughter of Gaffer Tomson, had broken her wrist, and though her parents were more likely to scold her than coddle her Rey suspected that they would appreciate some provisions to help offset the cost of the doctor’s bill—and that Becky would appreciate a lump of rock candy to help her forget the ache in her arm. 

The Tomsons were quite the farthest tenants out, settled on an odd strip of land that cut into the manor’s grounds in an irregular way; there was a history there, something that happened during the Restoration era, but Rey could hardly keep it straight. Every tenant’s family had a history, and every history was long. She had brought Mordred with her, knowing that Becky loved dogs and that Kylo would be writing letters all morning; so the walk was slower than it might otherwise have been, Mordred behaving as though he had been chained up for years and only just freed to chase birds and squirrels and what-have-you.

It was nearly autumn, but the leaves were still on the trees and the weather hot and fine; Rey removed her poke bonnet as she walked, disregarding the harm that might come to her complexion. She soon lost track of time, examining what grew here (she was still learning all the names, for the plants were not entirely the same as those at Ahch-To Hall) and standing very still to watch birds going about their business, at least until Mordred came racing back to oust them. She set her hamper aside and crouched at the edge of a pond to observe the fat frogs hopping and croaking; Mordred flung himself in after them and she had to scramble to avoid being splashed.

She had not yet regained her composure when she realized someone was watching her, and felt a frisson of alarm. No one  _ ought _ to be trespassing on the Duke’s land, but of course, it might be almost anyone from the villages, as they’d become accustomed to making free of it in the long months of his absence…

It was not anyone Rey had met before. It was a woman of Lady Leia’s age or perhaps a bit more, a woman of obvious gentility. Her face was strong and uncompromising, with deep grooves of smile or frown lines worn on either side of a tightly-held mouth, but it was clear that she had once been a great beauty: her features were absolutely perfect. She was taller than Rey, and thinner, and for a moment Rey felt that she was being judged and perhaps found unworthy.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“Who are  _ you _ ?” Rey replied, straightening her back.

“I asked first,” she said, “and you ought to know you are trespassing on Lord Alderaan’s land.”

Rey could not help but smile. She was not a very assuming figure, she knew: she was wearing what she considered her work-dress, which she didn’t mind getting muddy or staining or tearing on a walk through the woods. No lady would remove her bonnet at any point; and  _ certainly _ no lady would allow her face to become as red as a strawberry. This person undoubtedly took her for a maid, just as everyone seemed to, before they knew who she was. “I am very aware of whom this land belongs to,” she said. “In point of fact, it belongs to me—or my husband, and I am told that that is the same thing.”

The woman blinked. “He is married then,” she said. 

Rey nodded.

“You are not what I imagined you would be.”

“And we have not yet been properly introduced,” Rey retorted, unsure of why she felt stung by this stranger’s lack of regard.

But rather than expressing any discomfort whatsoever, the woman simply said, “I am Miss Jyn Erso, of Lah’mu House.”

She seemed to expect some kind of response, but Rey did not know what. She did not want to say ‘pleased to meet you,’ but felt obliged to do so in order not to be absolutely anti-social. Miss Erso—a maiden aunt? How strange that such a beautiful woman had never married—smiled tightly, and said that she ought to be on her way, and Rey let her go.

Mordred raced back to Rey’s side, barking furiously at Miss Erso’s back. “Yes,” Rey said to him, “I have many questions, too.”

* * *

  
Rey found it impossible to forget Jyn Erso of Lah’mu House, however. Later that day she entered the library and saw her sketches of the proposed canal, lying out on a table, and realized where she knew that name: from Krennic & Erso, of course. She had met Mr. and Mrs. Krennic in London, of course, and had (in Luke’s name) corresponded with Mr. Erso on the topic of canals, but had always imagined him to live in London, for that was where his post was to be sent.

Lah’mu House, she learned, was the home of quite their nearest neighbor. It was just on the other side of the Tomsons’ land, by the maps in the library. A book of stately homes in England informed her that it was not large or significant: “Those in the neighborhood would do better to visit Duke’s Alderaan, an inhabited ruin with an Anglo-Saxon church nearby (see DUKE’S ALDERAAN).”

Her husband was not much more forthcoming on the subject of Lah’mu House. “One child, of an age with me,” he said, flatly. “Letty Erso. Seen only at church and rarely then. I believe she is married now. I do not know her married name.”

“And her parents? The rest of her family? She had a maiden aunt?”

Kylo shrugged, indifferent. “I was a child. I paid no attention. The residents of Lah’mu House  have not called on me, and I have not received them. I suppose they must be related to the Erso of Krennic and Erso, but that is of no great importance. I do not hold a man’s relations’ behavior against him.”

Another person might have intuited from this unenthusiastic response that Kylo did not wish his wife to have further acquaintance with their neighbor, but Rey was not so easily dissuaded. Miss Jyn Erso was a mystery. If her niece had gone to church with Kylo as a child, then the rest of the family must have, as well; yet Mr. Featherstonehaugh had not mentioned them to her, nor Mr. Reffe. Were they such recluses? Or had they become entangled in some Revivalist sect and rejected the usual run of village life? The possibilities whirled in Rey’s mind, and she was determined to know more.

Fortunately it would not be difficult to find out. There could be nothing more conventional than paying a morning call on one’s nearest neighbor.

Therefore, the next day Rey arrayed herself in all her finery—she had not dressed to pay a call since she was in London, and Bebe was in ecstasies at finally being permitted to practice her arts upon her mistress. She would have preferred to ride, but she called for the carriage nonetheless: if the Ersos proved to be high sticklers, she wanted to be able to make it very clear to them that she was the Duchess of Alderaan and absolutely to be respected.

This turned out to be an unfortunate choice. Perhaps Kylo’s motion sickness was catching somehow, for Rey felt quite green about the gills by the time they pulled up to Lah’mu House, and was obliged to order the coachman to pause for a moment while her stomach settled. Fortunately it did not take long; she had saved a piece of Becky’s lemon-flavored rock candy, and this childish treat helped quite a bit. She was sure she did not present a shameful appearance when she finally alit.

The guide-book had been right about Lah’mu House. It was well kept and well built, but so unassuming that there was nothing to say about it. The Ersos were shabby-genteel, Rey realized, as she followed the butler through the house: he seemed to be one of a very few servants. Perhaps they did not think it right for their daughter to mix with the young Duke, so high above her…?

The room where Miss Erso awaited her guest was a pleasant enough parlor, but it was dominated by a heavy wheeled chair, in which an old man dozed. Miss Erso herself was placed on a pouf next to him; when Rey entered she stood and said, “you must forgive my father; he is asleep, and I do not like to wake him. I shall have Mr. Tuesso wheel him out, if you do not mind.”

“I don’t mind a bit,” Rey said, pitching her voice low, “and feel rather that I must be intruding—I am so sorry. I did not realize your father was an invalid.” She was not a little shocked and confused: was this the person she had corresponded with only a few years ago? And what would happen to her canal now? 

They watched the butler slowly convey Mr. Erso out of the room. Rey tried to martial her questions.

“Your husband did not tell you much of us, then?”

Rey examined Miss Erso. She seemed a woman of character, of iron backbone: something in her reminded Rey of Leia, of Holdo, or of Lady Snoke. Perhaps she had a personality that made her an antidote, a personality that would lead people to call her a battle-ax, and that was why she had never married? If that were the case, no amount of doing the pretty would weigh with her.

“No,” Rey said. “He does not want to see you. A little girl lived here, your niece perhaps, when he was a child; and he was not permitted to be friends with her, because of his mother’s reputation. He is more than capable of holding a grudge for a lifetime.”

She knew she was being abominably direct, and abominably rude, but she did not see how else to proceed. She did not know what to expect from Miss Erso: cold civility was the best she could hope for. She had not imagined, however, that Miss Erso would blink (just as she had when she discovered Rey’s identity) and then laugh, helplessly and riotously.

“Excuse me?” Rey asked.

“You did not mean to be rude, I’m sure,” Miss Erso said, wiping a tear from her eye and struggling to repress a smile. “It is only that no one has told me something so ridiculous in a very long time.”

“Ridiculous?”

“He must be very stupid. Is he stupid? I could not have imagined that Lady Leia’s son would be; but then, stranger things have happened.”

“No,” Rey said, “not stupid. He can be very short-sighted, however.”

“What man is not? And of course he would not know. Letty Lancer—Miss Letitia Erso, she was, before she was married—is not my niece. She is my daughter. And that is why Lord Alderaan did not make her acquaintance in his youth.”

* * *

The whole story came out over the course of that morning call. It was a rather sad tale, and an uncommon one, Rey thought: uncommon in every way but one, that Jyn Erso had lost her virtue, like so many other girls before.

Miss Erso had been a girl a few years older than Lady Leia, at the time of her father’s greatest renown as a canal-builder; though he was in Trade, there was some hope of a good marriage for her, as his fortunes were large. There were plans to bring her out; but she wanted no part of the London Season, and instead ran away.

Once Miss Erso made it to a port, she had found it easy to pose as a boy, being tall and strong and rather flat-chested. She had had many adventures, and met a great many people, and gone to the Continent and back, and managed to be taken on as a midshipman on a naval vessel. She would have lived the rest of her life that way, she thought, except that she had made a mistake. She had fallen in love.

Cassian Andor had been a handsome Marine, very poor but very worthy, and very dedicated to King and country. He had saved her from certain death in a cutting-out expedition, and she had in exchange told him her great secret. For a time all was idyllic, though on a tighter-run ship they would have run the risk of punishment for sodomy—it was impossible to keep such a relationship quiet on a ship-of-the-line, where men slung their hammocks in shifts to save space. (Indeed, Miss Erso supposed that her true gender was known to at least half the crew; fortunately, they were a loyal bunch.) 

The idyll ended when Miss Erso missed her courses three months in a row and had to admit to herself: she was pregnant.

There were ways of taking care of this problem, Miss Erso knew, and she had planned to do so the next time they reached port: any brothel would be able to assist her. But she made the mistake of telling Lieutenant Andor, and he insisted that no such thing could happen. What she ought to do, he said, was find a place to live, and have the baby, and wait; he would make his fortune, and wed her, and they would together return triumphant to her parents.

This scheme did not seem sensible to Miss Erso, but in truth she did not know what else to do. She had become rather attached to the baby, having waited too long to abort it; she did not want to give it up, and she did not want to give Lieutenant Andor up. So she obeyed.

Lieutenant Andor did not make his fortune. He could not even pay the doctor’s bill for Jyn’s lying-in, which she accomplished in a dirty back room of a pub, though he sold his pocket-watch and all his buttons. Soon the question was whether she would turn to prostitution, or swallow her pride and go home. Alone she would have been perfectly capable of prostituting herself, not seeing it as much different from any other job; but she had already sacrificed a great deal for Lieutenant Andor, and she did not like to think of how he would react. Then a Bow Street Runner turned up at her door, having searched for ever to find her, and carrying a message from her father and ten pounds sterling. When she felt the weight of the coins in her hand, she wept with relief.

Therefore Jyn Erso returned home to Lah’mu Hall, bedraggled, dressed in men’s clothing, and with an infant in tow.

“I was very lucky,” Miss Erso said, “for you see, my father loves me.”

Rey  _ could _ see. There was not one man in a hundred who would have taken his prodigal daughter back in such a state: she did not think Luke would have done so, despite his famous piety. Galen Erso had taken one look at his daughter, and at baby Letitia, and asked no questions, and welcomed them home.

Home was changed, however. The scandal around the Krennic & Erso canal had occurred while Jyn was at sea, and the family’s fortune had ebbed. They were already cut by many of their acquaintance, and Miss Erso knew that her re-appearance would create only more embarrassment for them both. Then the last hope faded: Lieutenant Andor was killed, not as a hero but as a spy, in almost the first shots of the war with France. Miss Erso’s reputation would never be saved by marriage. She and her father rusticated themselves, accepting only business correspondence, and focusing all their attentions on engineering and on raising Letitia.

“You must have been there when your father was working on the canal at Ahch-To Hall, then!” Rey exclaimed. “I had thought you had a brother who would have assisted him; but  _ you _ did!”

Miss Erso quirked a smile. “I had always helped him,” she said. “It was why I was so easily able to pass for a midshipman: he taught me maths. But it seemed to me that if I were ruined already, I might as well learn a useful trade. The canal at Ahch-To Hall was the first I ever designed myself.”

Rey was staggered. “But you could not direct the men—?”

“Oh, I have a bailiff,” she said. “He is quite intelligent enough to carry out my requests; and of course, back then my father was well enough to oversee the labor. It has only been in the last few months that his mind has truly wandered.”

“I see,” Rey said. “I had corresponded with him, you know, about the canal. Or rather, my guardian did; but I wrote the letters, and he only signed them.”

“Then we have been friends these several years at least,” Miss Erso said, properly smiling now, “for I wrote the letters back, and my father only signed them. Do you know, I have not had a female friend—why, as long as you have been alive! How strange. You must call me Jyn, my dear.”

“And you must call me Rey. I suppose we are both rebels, and that is why we deal so well together,” Rey said. “I am friends with Lady Leia, and with Miss Rose Tico, and I have innumerable acquaintances; but I do not think I have admired any of them as much as you. You have lived the life you wanted for yourself. The only thing I do not understand is why you kept your daughter so apart from the world.”

Jyn pressed her lips together. “She knew of her circumstances,” she said. “How could I take her to meet people where I myself would not be received? Even her come-out had to be handled by a distant relation, and now that she is married, I must stay away from her and my grandson. Perhaps that way his life will not be tainted by my choices.”

“Lady Leia—”

“Do you imagine that I entertain duchesses every day? Or that we did, before I was ruined?” Jyn’s tone was not angry, but matter-of-fact. “We were not friends before I went to sea; we were not friends after; and  _ she _ was not ruined, after all. To press an acquaintance would have been abominable forwardness.”

Rey wished to argue, for she knew Lady Leia and knew that she would have welcomed Jyn with open arms; but she could not find an error in Jyn’s reasoning. For all she knew, Lady Leia was as high in the instep as any Duke’s daughter might be, excepting only her weakness for Mr. Solo. That this misconception lasted years was a shame, but then, Jyn was clearly the type of person who made up her mind and carried on with her life and did not look back to question if she understood everything and had made all the right decisions.

“You are entertaining a duchess now,” Rey said, feeling a little silly for saying so, and feeling definitely silly in her finery. She quite outshone her new friend.

“I suppose I am,” Jyn said. “Do you think your countenance can rehabilitate me?”

“Hardly,” Rey admitted. “But I think there are better things to discuss—have you, perhaps, received the letters that the Duke and I have sent?”

Jyn had not; her father had deteriorated sadly in the past few months, and she had allowed all business to pile up, correspondence going unanswered. So Rey disclosed the contents of the letters to her. The more Rey thought about Jyn’s situation, the more she realized that the canal scheme was precisely the thing to improve it: as long as her father lived, she could continue doing business in his name, and Duke’s Alderaan being so close she could direct the work herself, or in any case keep close watch on her bailiff, without abandoning him in his last years. Then, too, the money would surely not go amiss: Rey had already mentally increased the fees they would pay, an act of charity that she hoped Jyn could not refuse.

Soon they were in Jyn’s study, rifling through her papers and exploring possibilities for the canal. It was a pure delight to speak with someone who so completely matched Rey’s interests and concerns. Cook and Mrs. Dodd and Mr. Albemarle were kind enough; Lady Leia was brilliant in her own field, and her friends artistically and politically minded, happy to explain their particular areas of expertise to Rey; Kylo had become a willing conversational partner, and was ready to discuss philosophy or ethics at any time; but she had not encountered someone so willing to engage with maths and physics and so excited by functional, fruitful work as herself in many months.

On the carriage-ride home, however, it occurred to her that she would have to think hard about what to tell her husband. She had a strong suspicion that he would not like Jyn.

The facts of the matter were these: Kylo had come to terms with Rey’s engagement in the affairs of the estate very quickly, but she had never heard him speak with approval of any other woman engaging in such work. The wounds of his childhood were very close to the surface, very raw, and they all centered around his mother, his father, the playmates he never had. In many ways Jyn was utterly unlike Lady Leia, but in others they were far too close. If he took a dislike to Jyn, she knew he was perfectly capable of canceling the entire canal scheme out of spite.

To deceive anyone did not sit well with Rey; but neither was she willing to risk her plans being set aside. She determined to speak as little of the visit as she might, and let him draw what conclusions he would. With luck, he would not think to inquire.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: If you have triggers related to pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, know that (1) there is a content warning below for the entire rest of the novel regarding these triggers; (2) I will also warn for specific details on a chapter by chapter basis in the endnotes. (Including in this chapter!)
> 
> ROT13'D CONTENT WARNING, RE: PREGNANCY, MOTHERING, AND CHILDBIRTH, FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF THE STORY, DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE SPOILED: Erl orpbzrf certanag ohg, nsgre na nethzrag jvgu Xlyb, fhssref n snyy sebz ure ubefr naq n zvfpneevntr. Gur zvfpneevntr jvyy or qrfpevorq va fbzr qrgnvy naq fur jvyy fhssre n ybat vyyarff sebz bgure pbzcyvpngvbaf. Yngre va gur fgbel Erl jvyy orpbzr certanag ntnva, jvgu n unccvre bhgpbzr. Gur qrgnvyf bs puvyqovegu jvyy arire or qrfpevorq.

Rey was not precisely unfamiliar with her body. Her body was like a good, but uninteresting, horse: a cart horse that had been hitched to so many conveyances so frequently and by so many people that it had stopped seeking any special treatment and merely accepted what was asked of it. She knew, for example, that if she asked her legs to walk all day, they could; that if she asked her stomach to go without food for twenty-four hours, it could (although much longer and she would begin to feel faint); that if she did not wish to sleep she could avoid it, but not for long, because she was miserable if she did not have four hours’ uninterrupted rest.

Still she had never spent much time thinking about it, since she was a basically healthy young woman, and so it took her longer than it might otherwise have done for her to realize that the thing had been done, the seed had been planted: she was pregnant.

Her courses had never been regular; she had seen droplets of blood on her thighs, however, and believed this to mean there was no child. The doctor later told her that she had been wrong; with some women there is still blood early, and no one knows why. But she had never discussed the issue with a doctor or a midwife and had never heard of this fact.

She had not felt hungry in the mornings for some time, of course, which was strange, but then, she was in a strange place with strange people, and it seemed only reasonable that her body would change too, fitting itself to life at Duke’s Alderaan. Certainly she was not vomiting. The only pregnant woman she could remember speaking to about pregnancy had vomited every morning for months, and said that this was a sign that the child was a boy. Perhaps, since Rey did not vomit, this meant that the child was a girl?

In any case she did not know she was pregnant by any one of the signs she had heard of. Rey simply woke up one morning and felt a strange tightness in her stomach, and she knew. The child was too small to feel, the seed still barely germinated, and yet somehow the knowledge was there, rock-solid.

Strangely that morning Rey  _ did _ feel hungry, craved milk, in fact, fresh milk, which had always meant comfort to her: so she went down to the dairy and found the crocks standing full. They had bought a milch cow only two weeks before, when Rey said that it was foolish to keep buying their milk from the village, when the farmers could make more money by making cheese and taking it to the big market in town at quarter-day; she was grateful, tasting the thick sweet liquid, remembering Luke. She could live in her senses, just for a moment, and in her memories, and not think about the situation she had now gotten herself into.

But she could not put thinking off forever. She set her cup on a shelf, leaned against a wall, pressed her hands to her stomach, still flat beneath her gown. This was natural: this was normal. This was the process by which the milch cow came to produce milk. This was the process which marriage was established for, the reason why a Duke must marry. The child she was carrying would, with luck, grow to become the heir to Alderaan, and would carry on the family.

These things Rey knew, and yet she had learned them late: they were the things Luke had taught her, and Leia, and all the Ton. The deeper lessons she had learned were very different. 

The last time she had known babies she had been very young. She had minded them while their mothers went with men for money. She had not known exactly what they did then, except that some of them evidently liked it and some of them didn’t, and that it was the way you got babies. And babies were a blessing: this everyone agreed. They made your breasts bigger and men liked that, and if you had one and you nursed it you could avoid becoming pregnant again for some times. The prostitutes—those women were prostitutes, whores; higher-class women who did the same thing were Paphians, or lights-o’-love, or soiled doves, and Rey wondered exactly where the line was, between women people would call ‘whores’ and women people would call ‘Paphians’—all said so.

But minding babies while their mothers did their jobs was a far cry from bearing one herself. She had never been present at a lying-in. When she was living on the streets she had been chased away; then she was at the Asylum for Poor Orphan Girls; then she was with Luke. She had seen cows give birth, and dogs, and sheep; it could not be so different for people, and yet somehow it  _ felt _ different when it was her own body that would be asked to run the race. 

Her body had always done what she asked of it; it had risen to every challenge. Though she might have apprehension about childbirth, knowing as she did the danger involved, she could not have any real fear; either she would pass through the ordeal unscathed, or not. The question that troubled her more was—what would happen after? How could she be a mother when she never had one herself?

Rey had in her mind the mistiest, most romantical visions of motherhood. She had always imagined her mother as an ethereal figure, swathed in white gauze, pure as an angel, forced to abandon her in the direst circumstances. Even after she grew up she had cherished this vision, faintly absurd. Time had taught her that, unless she were Luke Skywalker’s side-slip (and no one had ever remarked on a resemblance between them) she were likely another whore’s brat, with no more gentle blood in her veins than any of the children she had minded; but this was not something that she had liked to contemplate.

In any case, even if her mother had walked the streets, she might have been kind. Some of the mothers of the children she minded were. She might have been pretty; she might have been forced to abandon Rey in the direst of circumstances. She certainly would not have been swathed in white gauze, but this was the least detail.

Still:  _ might, might _ . All was supposition. And apart from those vague imaginings, and the women Rey knew on the streets, what other mothers could she model herself after? Neither Lady Leia nor Miss Erso seemed to have been highly successful.

This was what Rey was considering, feeling very at sea, when Mrs Dodd came into the dairy and found her clutching her stomach and weeping a little.  She clucked just like a plump hen. “Oh my! Your Grace, what’s wrong, my dear? Is it the stomachache?”

Mrs Dodd was so motherly in herself that Rey could not help but tell her the truth. “It is—I believe you may wish me happy,” she said.

“An heir!” Mrs Dodd cried. “Oh but dearie, I know very well why you’d be crying. I cried like I was the baby when I had my first, and never knew why, for I was happy as may be. But you can’t be very far along yet,” she said, and cast a critical eye over Rey’s form. “Better not to tell anyone before the Duke, not to say that you were wrong to tell  _ me _ , for a woman needs support,” and she put her arm around Rey just as though Rey were not a duchess at all.

It was this kindness that tipped Rey over the edge into real sobbing. She had worked so hard to convince Mrs. Dodd that she was not some untouchable lady of quality, that they were truly colleagues in their fight to keep Duke’s Alderaan running; finally here it was, that friendliness she had longed for. “There, there,” Mrs. Dodd tutted, “there there,” and produced a voluminous hankie for Rey to blow her nose.

“You will have to teach me a great deal,” Rey finally said, “for you know I never had a mother, and I will be very much lost.”

“Ah, you’ll know what to do,” said Mrs Dodd heartily. “In the pinch every mother does. Not that it always turns out just as it ought—Lady Leia had all the proper sentiments, but she could never make it turn out right, I fear. But you won’t have that trouble, I’ll warrant.”

Rey glanced up, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. “Lady Leia—do tell me about it,” she said. “I hardly know how to ask the Duke. He has told me a very little; but he is so stern and sometimes so miserable, I know his childhood must have not been quite what it ought.”

“Well, it’s his story to tell,” Mrs Dodd began, but Rey could tell that she longed to gossip. “I was only a housemaid then in any case, and younger than you are now, when the troubles really happened; but his father wasn’t quality, and that was a fact, and it was a sore trial to him.”

This was a new idea for Rey, and she asked for clarification. “Well, it’s not to say that Mr. Solo was a  _ bad _ man; no chasing us around, nothing of that sort. But he ought to have known better than to marry out of his kind. He might have been a suitable husband for an upper servant, miss, or a shopkeeper’s daughter, if he were ever able to come home from the sea; but Lady Leia was too different from him, and he never could be persuaded to give up that ratty boat of his and that smuggler’s life, and seeing his father like that is no way for a boy to grow up. Boys need men to look up to.”

Rey thought of Finn, as fatherless as she herself had been before she met Luke, and nearly corrected Mrs. Dodd; but she could not say but that Finn would have been better off with a person in his life to emulate. She contented herself with saying “I do not get the impression that he’s turned out at all like his father.”

“Well, you never knew his father then,” Mrs. Dodd replied. “A decent man bent on being bad, that’s what he was; always saying that he cared only for himself, then putting the lie to it with his actions. That’s how he and Lady Leia found each other, for they surely never would have otherwise: she was in distress and he helped her out of it, just like a knight in a fairy-story. Then he went away, just as he ought to have done; but he came back when she called because of the angels in his better nature, for all he knew he shouldn’t and said he wouldn’t. And he kept doing it, and sooner or later there was little Ben and everyone pretending he belonged at Duke’s Alderaan.”

“A decent man bent on being bad,” Rey repeated, considering this perspective on her husband. “He is very proper, you know, not a swashbuckler. You cannot imagine what he is in a London ballroom!”

“Proper and good aren’t hardly the same thing.”

And they weren’t, Rey had to agree.

Rey could see that Mrs. Dodd was wavering on the edge of some confession— _ he’ll be a kind father, my lady, _ she imagined. The housekeeper could not quite bring herself to say whatever it was, viewing it perhaps as an impossible liberty. Rey asked, “you don’t mind that he killed his father?”

This was perhaps rather too blunt a question, and Mrs. Dodd’s kindly old eyes squinched up at at it, taken aback; but she was the housekeeper of a great house and too formidable to be set on her ears at an impertinent question from a young mistress. “I do not,” she said firmly, “nor do any of us here, and if someone says otherwise they won’t work in this house much longer.”

“Why?”

“He’s his mother’s son,” Mrs. Dodd said. “He’s the Duke.” 

Long after Mrs. Dodd had left the dairy Rey stood, feeling the ancient weight of the building around her and imagining what it would be like to command that sort of blind loyalty. Lady Leia still loved her son and wanted the best for him, even when he was a patricide or the nearest thing to. The servants still looked up to him, even when he neglected them and the estate for years upon years. Society still loved and valued him, even when girl after girl found herself ruined.

Rey did not think she had ever commanded that sort of love. Luck, yes, when Luke took her from the orphanage; but she had always known that her place with him was dependent on her behavior, that he could put her back where he had found her. In Society she had been present on the sufferance of Countess Holdo, and Lady Leia’s whim to introduce her in the Metropolis. And now…

She spread her hands over her still-flat belly. Now she was in Han Solo’s role, parent of the heir of Alderaan. Mrs. Dodd so easily dismissed Mr. Solo! Would she be in the same case, a footnote in her child’s life? 

Surely it would be different. She was a woman: women always have a closer bond with their children (she thought, knowing her own mother had abandoned her). If it was a boy it would feel no need to rebel against her (she thought, remembering Kylo’s cold gaze when he looked at Lady Leia). If it was a girl…

She felt herself slipping into fruitless imaginings, and pulled herself back from them, with an effort. Her pregnancy could only bolster her position, she told herself; whatever Kylo’s faults, her child would be fed and warm and never suffer what she had when she was young. The best thing she could do would be to tell her husband, and enjoy his joy and gratitude.

* * *

Two days later she had still not found the moment to communicate the situation to Kylo. The opportunity had presented itself multiple times; yet each time she thought of Mr. Solo, and of the dogged loyalty Mrs. Dodd had shown to Kylo across all class barriers and despite Mr. Solo’s admitted ‘decency,’ and she could not form the words. When she told him she was ill he presumed she had her courses—an idiotish notion, for surely he knew it was not the right time—and did not come to her bed; so one more opportunity was lost.

Mrs. Dodd had been right about one thing: it was Rey’s responsibility to tell the Duke before any one else. When she wrote to Rose Tico, she kept the letter full of cheerful observations about Duke’s Alderaan and a loving description of her encounters with Jyn Erso; she described Jyn’s life in detail, and hoped that it might inspire Rose to embrace her own unusual path. But she did not say a word about her pregnancy.

Writing to Lady Leia was another matter. Rey made it nearly a page without a confession; but suddenly the news was pouring out of her, and she was begging for advice, wishing her pen were more fluent and that she could express all her feelings. At the end of the letter she considered throwing it into the fire; but she could not bring herself to do it. She sealed it neatly and brought it to her husband to frank, and she nearly told him then; but he said “Writing to the family scandal, I see,” in such a repressive voice that she simply said “yes, to your mother,” and went away again in irritation.

* * *

It was a surprise to Rey, and an unpleasant one, when Kylo announced that they would be traveling that fall after all.

It had been several days since she realized her pregnancy, and she had still not found a way to tell him of it. When he announced, at the breakfast table, that Lord Hux had invited them to his hunting-box, and he had accepted the invitation, she had a brief impulse to use it as an excuse as to why they should not go; but she did not think that it was right to turn their child into a bargaining-chip, not yet, not even before it was born.

In truth it was Rey’s own fault that they were going, for (as Kylo said) she had done such an excellent job of putting the estate in order that there was no reason for them to stay. Krennic & Erso had written to say they would send a man to survey the land, and Mr. Albemarle was more than competent to oversee that process; construction could not begin until spring at the earliest, for there was much planning to be done. As for the other improvements they had discussed, these too were within Mr. Albemarle’s capabilities, now that he had been charged with them and given Rey’s money to draw upon; there was no reason they might not have a pleasant hunting season with their friends.

Kylo was not foolish enough to think that Rey was a great partisan of Hux’s; he had no reason to believe that she would like Mrs. Hadrassian, the elderly aunt who kept house for Hux. He had some hopes, however, that Mrs. Phasma would warm to his new wife, and that she might be a more appropriate friend for the Duchess of Alderaan than the women Rey had consorted with in London, and Mrs. Phasma was (he was told) likely to join the party. Phasma, among other things, was a notable rider; Rey might develop her skills at riding aside with her, and through this shared interest grow in friendship.

If he examined his motivations in accepting Hux’s invitation, however, Kylo had to admit that he longed to remind himself of who he was. His marriage had changed him, he saw that: changed his attitude towards his tenants, changed his attitude towards Duke’s Alderaan as a whole. There was no fear that he might become sentimental about the house itself; he remembered his childhood too clearly. But he did not wish to become a provincial gentleman, rusticated by choice not necessity.

He was surprised and pleased to find that, when he announced his plan, Rey voiced no reluctance. Certainly, when he glanced up from his plate to register her reaction, he could not miss the brief flicker of dismay that passed over her features; but she said nothing, only asked when they were to leave.

* * *

Rey found that her husband, so poor a master of his estates, was excellently capable of motivating his valet to pack and prepare his luggage, and could be made ready to go anywhere in a day or two. Bebe was not so efficient, but with Rey’s help she made shift to prepare. The mending had   to be finished, Rey’s riding-habit taken down an inch to accommodate the boots she had bought before leaving London—all tiny tasks, easy to ignore when at home, yet absolutely necessary before even the smallest journey. The carriage-ride would take only one day, even in easy stages; the house party, however, might go on for weeks, until the gentlemen had tired of foxes and pheasants both.

She was still sick to her stomach, and tried to hide it; she did not think she succeeded, but fortunately Lord Alderaan seemed to find it perfectly normal to be afflicted with carriage-sickness. That said something about his self-centeredness, she supposed, but she could not dwell on it while keeping her insides in. Mordred was in nearly as wretched shape as she was, confused by the motion of the carriage and constantly tormented by the smell of the horses. The only member of the party in good spirits was Lord Alderaan himself, and that only because he chose to ride his own horse most of the way.

Rey longed to ride herself, but Mrs. Dodd had told her the jolting would be bad for the baby; she was not sure she entirely believed it, but she did not wish to take any rash action. She could not think how she would get out of riding to the hunt, but at least for now she was safe enough: few ladies would wish to travel so far on horseback, and fewer still would dare to do so.

By the time their carriage swept up before Lord Hux’s hunting box Rey felt quite as bedraggled as she ever had. The late-afternoon sun had baked the interior of the carriage until her hair was stringy with sweat; Mordred had insisted on sitting on her lap for the final third of the journey, a tiny parcel of body heat that only made the situation that much worse; then it had rained, a brief downpour that had done nothing to cool her or reduce the humidity. Kylo had taken refuge in the carriage during the cloudburst and dripped water all over the interior, making the cushions marshy. Her skirts stuck to her legs as though she had damped them, creating a picture that might have been racy had she not been so obviously exhausted. All that was necessary for the torment to be complete, she thought, was…

Ah yes. There it was. Lord Hux and his kinswoman Mrs. Hadrassian came out to the steps to greet their guests; behind them came Lady Phasma, tall and cool in blue silks, looking as though she had stepped out of the pages of La Belle Assemblée. The house was shaded, and they had been having a garden-party, for Mrs. Phasma still carried a tall glass filled with ice; Mrs. Hadrassian looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

Kylo swung down from his horse, a bit sunburnt and a bit damp but clearly having enjoyed the day’s exercise, and greeted his best friend with hearty welcomes and pats on the back; and so Rey was left to lever herself out of the carriage, feeling every mile in her rear end, as Mordred yapped and danced and tumbled headlong over her in his excitement to get out. The moment he was free he lifted his leg against the carriage-wheel. Rey did not await the footman but stepped down on her own, and found that she had landed in a mud-puddle. 

An auspicious beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING: In this chapter Rey realizes she is pregnant and thinks about the experience of early pregnancy, as well as her relationship with her own missing mother.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week I was truly being chased by bears, and only finished this chapter minutes before it went up. Therefore it's more apt than usual to have alterations—my betas are very likely to notice problems and errors. Please don't blame them for these—they haven't had a chance to see it!

Luke had never been much of a hunter; he was not sentimental about the cullings of herds and the killings of chickens, but he had been known to express sympathy for the fox, chased down by so many baying hounds. Rey therefore had little knowledge of what to expect from the party at Lord Hux’s hunting box, and was very grateful that they had arrived late enough in the day that no one could expect much of her. 

She was in a very bad mood at the end of her journey, but a cool bath and a dish of tea revived her spirits somewhat, particularly once Mordred had been remanded to the care of Hux’s master of hounds. Indeed, she was soaking in the bath with tea in one hand and a slice of bread-and-butter in the other, feeling very luxurious, when her husband came in to see how she did.

His eyes grew very wide when they saw her, and she was embarrassed at first, feeling as though she had been caught doing something not-quite-done: she ought to have bathed first and eaten later. Bebe scampered out of the room without a word, however, and she realized that his startlement was not irritation but lust.

“I did not realize,” he said, half-turning away.

“Oh, no matter,” she told him, leaning over the side of the tub to set her bread-and-butter on its plate and her tea on its saucer. “I told the servants that you were always permitted to disturb me—and had them move your room across the hall from mine; I hope I did not entirely ruin Mrs. Hadrassian’s scheme. They had no suites for us, which I cannot blame them for, the house not being large; but she had put you in quite the other wing!”

He made a strangled snort, glanced over at her, clasping his hands behind his back. “ _ Scheme _ is an apt description. At a house-party married couples are never placed in adjoining rooms.”

“I cannot think why,” Rey said, and on the instant realized what she had been too naive to guess.

“I would have been obliged to latch my door against Gwendoline Phasma,” Kylo said frankly. “I still may have to; she might be daring enough to pass under the gaze of Cerberus.”

Rey did not know how to respond: she was Cerberus in this metaphor? Hardly flattering. Was this a confession of some past amour? “If you would prefer…” she sallied.

“No!” He seemed stricken at the thought, actually turned to her, looking at her for the first time since he had entered. She leaned over the side of the deep tub, sitting on one hip in the deep water, hair piled in a messy knot atop her head. She felt the cool metal against the sensitive skin of her breasts, and was glad that he could not see her nipples tighten at the anxiously possessive look on his face. “No,” he said again. “I am glad for your interference. I have never been Mrs. Phasma’s lover—my God! That is Hux, if anyone. But she would find it amusing to teaze me, and you.”

Rey supposed that her husband would think her a provincial moralist if she admitted she thought little of that sort of teazing; she held her tongue, and lay back in the bath, and said, “I suppose Mrs. Phasma and I have one thing in common then—for I find that teazing you is my favorite pastime.”

“Get out of the tub,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Consider it an order.”

She did not tell him she felt ill, or any other lie, to prevent him from seeking his marital rights. She did not want to, not any more: it had been too long, and she knew there was nothing wrong with it, that the baby couldn’t be harmed. She stood slowly, wondering if he could detect the minute changes in her body: as far as she knew he had never seen her, naked, in the light. The water sloshed around her feet. He offered her his hand to steady her as she stepped from the tub: his touch seared.

What  _ did _ he think? He was fully clothed, swathed utterly in his familiar blacks, still stinking of horse and sweat and covered in road-dust: yet she knew what lay beneath that armor, and she had been married long enough to identify his arousal by sight.

He brought her a towel, playing the maid-servant; at first she tried to take it from him and dry herself, but he wouldn’t allow her to. The sensation of being dried, so gently and carefully, was overwhelming. She could not remember anyone ever washing and drying her, not even as a child. She could not remember anyone caring for her in such a way. Other people might let their maids do it: she never had.

She did not know she was weeping until her husband stepped back a pace and said, “What did I do?”

“Nothing!” she said, then, confusedly, “oh, you were so rotten today—you didn’t care a whit what I felt—and then you come here and dry me—”

“I didn’t care a whit what you felt?” he repeated. “What do you mean? Whatever can you mean? The carriage-ride—”

“Oh never  _ mind _ that!” she said, feeling very naked and raw. “Only I was in very poor spirits, and then do you know that I never had anyone take care of me in that tender way, and suddenly it just seemed all a great matter! The change in life and—” 

Of course afterwards she realized that she was overwrought, that it was her pregnancy perhaps making her both sensitive and maudlin; at the time she could not find words and could only look up at Kylo, obviously perplexed, holding the towel in his hands, unsure what to do. He seemed so lumpishly sweet that she wanted to kiss him: whether he loved her or not he certainly  _ cared _ for her, and that was something she could never take for granted.

“Oh, come here and kiss me already, you ninnyhammer,” she said, and he obliged.

For Kylo’s part, he could not explain the waves of emotion that came over his wife: he did not know how he had been rotten, and he did not know how he had pleased her. He had thought only of his own desires when he offered to dry her; it had not occurred to him that such little acts might bring an orphan to tears. He himself had many memories of parental care, for all he did not choose to recall them consciously to mind. It was not beyond his intellect that Rey had lived a different life, but he could not understand the deep wounds her childhood had left on her.

So he greeted her invitation to kiss her with joy: this at least was something he felt confident in. She had shown him again and again that she took pleasure in the act of love. He had never dreamt it could be possible and yet there she was, wanton and willing and yet chaste, in his bed each night he called for her, or he in hers when that was what he chose.

He indulged the phantasy of the stables then and laid her on her bed mother-naked, spreading her legs starfish-wide so he could see every part of her body. For a moment she seemed shy (though  _ she _ had been the one to invite him in, though she were in the bath) and wanted to cover herself; then she relaxed and let him look at her, worship her, as he so very desperately wanted to. 

She did not ask him to disrobe, seemed perhaps even titillated by the odd softness of his breeches against her thighs, the wide-springing shoulders of his coat against her hands: he could hardly breathe when he saw her naked form against his clothed one, felt himself deep inside of her and yet protected. She was so strong—so beautiful—she needed no armor; she needed nothing, but he tried to give and give—

When they had both spent (and he was sure she had as well; it was one of the great miracles of their marriage) they straightened themselves and Rey returned to her bath, now gone quite cold; they exchanged a few pleasantries, and before he left Rey called him to her and gave him a kiss, and looked as though she might almost have spoken—but said nothing..

It was quite the sweetest kiss he had ever received, unasked for, and given without the expectation of sex forthcoming. She had never done that before, never provided him with the least bit of affection outside the actual act of love, apart from conversation over the breakfast-table. The feeling it awoke in him was so strong he could not think of it. So he straightened his coat and left, and resolved to himself that he would try not to go to her  _ every _ night.

* * *

Rey supposed that a person who had spent very little time in the country, or who did not think very much about the realities of country life, might consider Hux’s hunting box “rustic”; she, however, did not.

Each room was furnished with the pale neo-Classical motifs that had recently become  _ de rigeur  _ in town; however each room was also provided with at least one monstrous trophy, stuffed and mounted on the wall, glass eyes goggling into eternity. The paintings were all on the subject of Nature and typically involved several inbred-looking dogs pursuing a hind, which might or might not be a representation of the goddess Diana; another Dian stood watch over the back garden, which Rey was informed was a true Spartan marble. She had some doubts about its provenance.

The house  _ was _ somewhat smaller than a great house at an estate would be, which meant that Rey was forever running into another guest; even when the gentlemen were out, the place seemed filled with people. This, she supposed, was what was truly ‘rustic’ about it: yet every one was forced to pretend that they loved having their privacy invaded at all times.

It might have been pleasant enough if Rey had been able to hunt with the gentlemen. She had never done so, and supposed she might feel bad for a fox; pheasants, however, were stupid birds that made very good eating, and she could well imagine that she would find them a pleasure to kill. Besides, Force was such a sweet goer that she longed to try her in an unfamiliar place, over unfamiliar obstacles. She was not quite certain that she ought to ride, given the baby, however, and any plans in that direction were stymied by Mrs. Phasma the morning after their arrival.

Rey had come down to breakfast and was quietly enjoying her meal when Mrs. Phasma arrived, dressed in a magnificent costume trimmed in scarlet. Her Cossack coat lent the dress a military air; and her petite cap, pinned over such a mass of shining silver-blonde hair, somehow managed to give the impression of a knight’s helmet. Perhaps it was simply Mrs. Phasma’s great height; but Rey felt suddenly that she was on review.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Phasma offered, with a curt nod.

Finn’s dear face swam before Rey’s mind’s eye. How many times had he seen Mrs. Phasma thus, coming down to breakfast? How many times had he been greeted by her? Possibly never: she did not seem the sort to make friends out of her servants. Still, Rey imagined that they had had more than a passing acquaintance: after all, Phasma had stolen him away from his previous employer, in her search for ever taller and more perfectly matched servitors. Who had he been paired with? Someone just his height, surely, selected the way one might select matched greys to pull a carriage. Perhaps his partner had similar coloring, or perhaps Phasma had chosen a very pale man, so they would set each other off…

Something inside Rey churned with disgust: not morning-sickness, but sickness at the thought of chusing servants so. Either one would have to ignore their personalities and abilities entirely in favor of handsome faces and tall figures, or one would have to assume there were thousands of men equal in amiability and capability to select from, all interchangeable and unindividual, the only difference being their stature and colors.

“Good morning,” Mrs. Phasma said again, though her voice revealed no irritation at being ignored. “You are woolgathering, Your Grace.” 

“Good morning,” Rey replied automatically. Then, after a moment: “You must call me Rey, you know.”

This offer was necessary, she knew: her husband surely wanted her to make nice with Mrs. Phasma, as they were very particular friends, for all he might not wish to be taken in to Phasma’s love-intrigues. She did not think she would enjoy hearing her Christian name from Mrs. Phasma’s lips.

“Then you must call me Gwendoline,” Mrs. Phasma said, with a tight smile. “La! I never imagined we would meet on such intimate terms, the day we were introduced!”

_ Gwendoline _ might have meant this statement to have a quelling effect on Rey: however it was quite the opposite. She was conscious suddenly of the fact that, if she had withheld her name from dear Gwendoline, she would still be “Your Grace.” That evening when they went in to dinner, she would lead the procession on her husband’s arm. And when she had offered her name, Gwendoline had had no choice but to offer her own.

“No,” Rey said, “I did not imagine that I would ever become your superior in precedence. You seemed such a great lady to me then!”

It was quite the worst set-down Rey had ever delivered, and she felt a moment of victory at Mrs. Phasma’s blankly horrified expression. Then she felt like an ass. Her husband had told her and told her of how his high rank had not protected him from social rejection: it felt good to conquer old enemies, but at what cost? She might enjoy tormenting Finn’s old tyrant—but it would not do Finn and Rose one whit of good now.

Therefore Rey moderated her comment: “Of course I still have everything to learn from you,” she said. “I may be a Duchess now, but I must confess that I know very little about my own rank. Would you believe that I have never ridden to the hunt?”

“Why my dear,” Mrs. Phasma said, “I do not ride to the hunt either—it is a sport for the gentlemen, and it is my belief that they far prefer the ladies to stay well away from it.”

Rey blinked. “Lord Alderaan told me that you were a most excellent rider,” she said. “I understood him to mean that you were to join the men in the actual pursuit…?”

Mrs. Phasma’s expression of dismay was, Rey thought, somewhat theatrical. “ _ No _ ,” she breathed. “Oh, perhaps once, when I was a shambolic young creature with no sense of dignity; today, however, I know better. And it is absolutely out of the question for any  _ matron _ to do so, my dear. Only the fastest women would, and I know Ren far too well to believe that you are hanging out to be part of Prinny’s set!”

“Certainly none of those loose screws are to be found in this household,” Rey observed.

“Never!”

Yet her husband had to lock the door against dear Gwendoline! It was too, too much. Rey was torn between relief that she might follow Mrs. Phasma’s lead and stay off her horse without having to explain herself, and exasperation that she was to be denied what she had begun to think might be a rare treat. She found herself going against her resolution to follow Mrs. Dodd’s advice, venturing “Alderaan  _ so _ did wish me to improve my seat, and he suggested that I learn from you; do you intend to ride out at all?”

“Perhaps a  _ very _ little ride,” Mrs. Phasma allowed.

That ride was the most boring of Rey’s life. She changed into a riding habit, but when she came down she discovered that Mrs. Phasma’s dress was scarlet, and therefore her colors were all wrong, “and it is too bad you sit a roan, for we would make a much prettier picture if you had a black, like your husband’s.” She found herself agreeing to go upstairs and change out of her soft and comfortable green riding habit and into a much less convenient blue one, decked out in a military style and with a dashing tricorne to evoke the navy: this passed muster, as Mrs. Phasma declared that the blue-and-gold would set off her red-and-silver to a tee. “Or rather we will set each other off, I should say, dear Rey,” she said, “for of course that is the point. It is lucky that you are so petite, and so dark!”

Rey was not, in point of fact, a terribly dark brunette; nor was she very much smaller than the average. Still, Mrs. Phasma was made on such an unusual scale that her horse was as large as Fighter. The comparison between her steed and Force made Mrs. Phasma ‘tsk’ again— “my dear, you have let him put you on a  _ pony _ ; that will never do; you need a mount matching your consequence!”

This assessment gave Rey some hope that Mrs. Phasma would lead her through her paces, and that they would get some enjoyable exercise; but this hope was false. They walked their horses around a sedate bridle-path, accompanied by a groom and speaking of nothing of consequence. The grounds were better kept than those at Duke’s Alderaan, but less beautiful, having been designed by a less expert hand; and there was nothing wild or ancient about them.

The most frustrating aspect of the day was how Rey could see Mrs. Phasma restraining herself. She  _ did _ have a beautiful seat; she  _ was _ exquisitely in control of her great white stallion, which clearly had a mind of its own were it not handled with such aplomb. No one could call Mrs. Phasma graceful, but she was powerful and skilled—and yet she declined, again and again, to take ditches and hedges, always guiding her mount around them with a little shrug of her shoulders as if to say  _ well, it is hardly feminine to jump your horse! _

Rey was becoming convinced that she would do the baby no harm ahorse, and she longed to get some real riding in: but she stuck with “dear Gwendoline” as close as she might, striving to make herself pleasant for Finn’s sake. She almost thought she had achieved her object at the end of their ride, when Mrs. Phasma said confidingly, “I must say, my dear, I was not at all certain that you would do for dear Ren when Lady Snoke told me he had offered for you; I thought that perhaps you would have no proper sense of duty; but now I see that you are a sweet little thing, and so very biddable. I wonder that you ever had the reputation for a strong-minded girl!”

“You are very kind to say so, Gwendoline,” Rey murmured, but though she was relieved to have some sign of approbation, she did not quite feel that she had been complimented.

This sense of unease only increased over the next few days, as she idled about or took sedate rides or (sometimes) joined the men for a picnic out-of-doors, after which they went back about their hunting and the ladies retreated inside for naps. Mrs. Hadrassian was perfectly civil, and the guests (apart from Mrs. Phasma) deferential to her rank, yet she felt a certain contempt in the company, and she was not at all sure it was not aimed at her. Or was it simply the insouciant attitude of the very rich and very high-ranking? 

It was not until several days in that she was able to identify the source of the feeling. The time had passed in long dull stretches and in rare spikes of interest; Kylo had come to her only once more, and they had had precious little time together, certainly no time for her to confess her pregnancy.

The evening that she realized she was truly surrounded by enemies, Rey had thought she might lose herself in her correspondence, a great pile of which had arrived that morning from Duke’s Alderaan; but Mrs. Hadrassian made a comment about whist, and Rey made the error of expressing no revulsion for the game. There was nothing for it but to set up a table: Mrs. Hadrassian would partner with dear Mr. Rinnrivin, and Lord Hux would oblige Her Grace, as “he is quite the best whist-player in the room, you see!”

Rey cast a beseeching glance to Kylo, but he was deep in conversation with Mrs. Rinnrivin, apparently over some political point. Mrs. Phasma was no help either; and she could hardly be so uncivil to her hosts as to declare that she did not, after all, have any interest whatsoever in playing a rubber. Therefore she sat down determined to make the best of it: Lord Hux might make her skin crawl, and had ever since she had first met him at Almack’s, but he was her husband’s best friend and she would find some way through.

The great irony was that Hux and Rey were not ill-suited as partners in whist. They took the first rubber easily, and Rey fancied it was not entirely because of Hux’s genius; in the second rubber they took a grand slam. Mr. Rinnrivin insisted that he be allowed another chance to redeem his honor, and Rey could not disagree; but Mrs. Phasma took Mrs. Hadrassian’s place, as she declared that she needed to excuse herself to speak with the servants.

Gwendoline was a much savvier player than Mrs. Hadrassian and the second rubber proceeded more fiercely. Still— “Well played,” she told Rey, at the end of the first game, which Rey and Hux won by a hair. “You do have talent at the tables; you’re a better partner for Hux here than Ren ever was!”

Hux ran fingers through his ginger hair, rested his elbows on the card-table. “Ren never had half a mind for cards or any mind for money,” he said. “Good that he married an heiress—not to slight you in any way, Your Grace—for it’s better yet that he married an heiress with a mind for cards and money!”

“I have been—trying to improve our holdings,” Rey said, not sure how far to go in such company, yet flattered by the compliment to her playing and pleased that her husband’s friends seemed to understand  _ some _ element of her worth. “I cannot blame my husband for the state of Duke’s Alderaan, however, just for example; I am led to believe any deficiencies are the work of many hands, across many years.”

Hux laughed. “Sure! But it’s a fudge to say he’d be well-inlaid if it weren’t for his sainted ancestors; Ren’s never had a head for figures. Cheated off me at every test at school.”

Rey did not know how to answer this, so she said “I believe it is your turn to lead, Mr. Rinnrivin,” and the conversation was paused for a moment as they played the trick; but the respite was short-lived.

“Lord Hux isn’t embellishing one whit,” Mrs. Phasma said, as Rey examined her cards to determine with which to lead. “I suppose he has told you how Lady Snoke helped him out of  _ innumerable  _ scrapes. It’s a miracle his shins weren’t broken, going to such shadowy figures as he did, all to stay in Hoby’s and Weston’s good graces!”

Rey did not understand for a moment, and managed to make a good play; but as the rest of the players laid down their cards, Gwendoline’s words registered with her. She tried to think of some other way to understand them, tried again, failed: they came down to one thing: Lady Snoke had lent her husband money.

It was not the matter of owing that rankled. When they were married, Rey was certain that some portion of her fortune would go to pay her new husband’s vowels; she had no illusions that she was marrying a miser. She would even have greeted the news that he was in debt to moneylenders with equanimity: if she had the opportunity to borrow money whenever she liked, before she became an heiress, she could imagine that she might have taken advantage of the opportunity. 

But Lady Snoke…! Even Rey, whose understandings of propriety were loose at best, knew that this was a major breach; she was not his mother, not his relation of any sort; it was a miracle tongues had not been a-wag since the moment the first exchange took place.

And yet now that she thought of it Rey realized she had heard more than one wit try to mock her husband for living in Lady Snoke’s pocket; she had herself noticed that he was overly attentive on that matron, had thought it downright odd how he truckled to her. But then they had gone away to Duke’s Alderaan, and out of Lady Snoke’s sphere, and she had let herself forget how large Lady Snoke had loomed in London.

Rey considered: her relationship to Lady Leia was not so very different. They were of such different ages that under normal circumstances they might never have met, or only met as mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. No blood tied them together, only similarity of mind—and not all that terribly much similarity of mind. Sentimental attachment to Luke’s memory, maybe, was their strongest tie, before Rey had married Kylo: but on that basis a true friendship had formed. 

What, then, was the basis upon which Kylo’s dependence on Snoke had formed? She could not imagine how they might have met, although she could imagine that a young man estranged from his mother might come to lean upon an older woman for approval and comfort. Certainly she could not believe there was anything untoward there—was  _ that _ what Mrs. Phasma was thinking she would assume?

It was, Rey realized: Gwendoline Phasma was observing her confusion with great pleasure. Their eyes met and Mrs. Phasma said, slowly and maliciously, “Dear Rey, we are all waiting for you!” And she was right, of course: Rey had been abominably slow to play her card.

She muttered some apology and cast a card down at random. Hux and Phasma exchanged gloating glances across the cards as they played out the remainder of the rubber: if they had not conspired to make her uncomfortable before the game began, certainly they had joined forces over its course. 

Rey did not know how she felt. It was irrational to be angry with Kylo: he had done nothing wrong, only something a little outré, and if the arbiters of Society winked at it, who was Rey to chide him? Yet it did not sit right with her, and she longed to ask him about it, to understand the depth of his debts, and to find out whether there was still a balance owed—whether of money or favors.

He stood just a few feet away, so close that Rey could hear his conversation: he was speaking with Mrs. Hadrassian about the management of birds on Hux’s land. Would he have had such a conversation before they were wed? Rey could not say: she did not think so. Then he would have eschewed a conversation with someone so insignificant (even his nominal hostess): Mrs. Hadrassian hung on Hux’s sleeve, after all, and was the next thing up from a paid companion. Further, he would have assumed that, because he was the Duke of Alderaan, there would be pheasants when he wanted to shoot them, and none when he did not want to. No: he had changed. She had changed him, or more likely, he had changed himself.

Still he had not changed enough to be attuned to Rey’s fervent wish that he cut off his conversation and come to her, rescue her from the game of whist: she could not leave without causing great comment. So she played the rubber through, indifferent to the outcome, and ignored Hux’s complaints that she was distracted. He knew perfectly well why that was the case, and could only be seeking to distress her even more deeply by suggesting that she was a bad sport.

She tried to catch his attention, and ask him to come to her that night, but could not manage it before they had each gone up to bed; she waited what seemed an age for him to come to her, pacing back and forth, and finally gave it up and padded across the hallway to knock at his door.

Locked. He  _ had _ told her that he locked it, after all. And in response to her quiet knock—nothing.

Rey padded back to her own room, disappointed and frustrated, and marveled at the change a few weeks had made: her one wish was to go home, to Duke’s Alderaan, where all was comparatively easy.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: In the heat of an argument, one spouse physically harms another.

There was nothing else for it, Rey resolved; she had to tell Kylo about the expected happy event, and she had to tell him when ever she had a chance, not waiting for the right moment. The right moment might never come, but she knew that if she stayed in Lord Hux’s hunting box much longer she would be driven insane. Then she might ask Kylo about Lady Snoke when he was in a melting mood, and perhaps winkle the truth out of him.

It seemed that the world conspired against her, however; she slept poorly and woke late, coming downstairs to the news that the men had already left for the day’s sport. Mrs. Phasma suggested a ride, in just such a saccharinely poisonous manner that Rey was certain she knew how dull their previous excursions had been; but fortunately she had a good excuse for remaining indoors, as she had a great deal of correspondence to read and respond to.

The letters were a great pleasure, reminding Rey of what it was like to not be surrounded by sworn enemies. Leia and Admiral Ackbar were full of their sort of political news; Poe was, apparently, teaching Finn to shoot, with reasonable success (although Finn confided that Poe was no very great hunter himself). They had obtained an invitation to hunt the grounds of an estate bordering the Ticos' property, and were there every day after pheasant.

As for Rose, Rey saved her letter for last. She did not know what she would find in it, but she was certain that whatever it was, it would serve to distract her from Phasma, Hux and all the rest of Kylo’s miserable friends. In her last letter to Rose, she had described meeting Jyn Erso; she was hopeful that Rose would have insight into Letty Erso’s life and come-out, and also that Rose would find it heartening to hear a story of a woman who had led an unusual life—for no matter that Jyn was not accepted into society, she had her work, and that was something wonderful!

But Rose’s response was not as cheerful as Rey had hoped it might be. Rose was very pleased to know that Rey had made a friend, of course, and agreed that it was beyond any thing that Rey and Jyn had corresponded under other names. She said that Jyn sounded like a true Original; but, she said, she had known Letty Erso, and did not think there was anything to celebrate in the situation.

Letty had been dreadfully missish, and very anxious about putting even one toe out of line, when she was out; she had not been a great success, and after almost being on-the-shelf had married a man who seemed to like those aspects of her personality, and not one that would help her blossom. Indeed Rose had known that Letty’s origins were “not  _ quite _ conformable,” but it was not openly spoken of, for Letty had the reputation of a very, very good girl—though she had never once been admitted to Almack’s, even with the sponsorship of a former client’s formidable Society wife. Lady Snoke would not bend, nor Mrs. Phasma, and Countess Holdo had been forced to give way.

Rose knew all these details not because she had been out at the time, but because her sister had. (At this Rey blinked, and reread the line: she knew that Rose had a sister, but thought perhaps she was dead, for no one ever spoke of her.) It was time, Rose, said, to unclasp her heart to Rey and to tell her about what had happened to Paige: she could not explain why she had not before, except that the wound was so raw that she could hardly bear to so much as think of it.

Rose’s sister Paige had been, if not a diamond of the first water, a  _ very pretty girl;  _ she had been expected to make a good match, if not a brilliant one. Her parents had invested their time and effort into her accordingly, for there was no son of the house, and Rose was not promising in that way, no matter how sweet her disposition and sunny her smile. (Rey had to disagree with this, Rose’s assessment of herself; but there was no arguing with pen-and-paper.)

Paige enjoyed her Season very much and danced with all the finest young men, even having the honor of the Duke of Alderaan’s escort at one memorable dinner-dance, but it was Lord Hux who most impressed her. She had been raised in a very stolid sort of home, with samplers all embroidered with improving mottoes and no novel-reading allowed; was it any surprise that she found Hux’s insolent drawl to be dashing, and his barbed wit miles funnier than anything she had encountered back home?

Rey did not wish to entertain this vision of Hux, but she found that she could. He had been a marvelous whist partner, until he had turned on her. She had seen that he was an athletic and graceful dancer. It was true that even his unkindest statements were often clever, and if he were unkind to someone who had been unkind to Rey…? She could well imagine feeling that his nastiness was justified, if only for a moment. If he had determined to court Paige Tico, he might well have won her over.

It seemed that was what he had done: wooed her, won her, and then—? No promises were made; no proposals; Paige simply allowed her head to be turned with the night and the garden and the fairy-lights shimmering. And she had found herself with child.

Oh, there was an uproar; but Lord Hux had not made himself so obvious that any one credited Paige with telling the truth. He had danced with her, certes, but only as much as any other man had; he had walked with her, certes, but only in the lighted paths, as far as anyone knew. Mrs. Tico did not know what to believe, and taxed Paige most fiercely for lying, until she found that Paige had no other story to tell, and all her assertions matched; but if her own mother had no faith in her, would Lady Snoke?

No; Lady Snoke would not. Paige would never again be welcomed in to Almack’s; she would never again be welcomed in to society. She had been sent to the Continent, there to stay with Mrs. Tico’s cousin, who followed the drum, and to have her baby in whatever situation she might find for herself there. They had not had a letter from her or the cousin in six months, in the Tico household. They could only assume the worst.

And yet, Rose wrote, she knew that her sister spoke truly, and that Lady Snoke and Mrs. Phasma both were very well aware. She knew it because when she had arrived in town for her Season, uncertain whether it was worth the lace trimmings on her gowns (for how could she find a husband without entrée to the best houses?), she had received Lady Snoke’s and Mrs. Phasma’s calling-cards on the second day of her visit. With them had been her vouchers for Almack’s. Blood money, Rose called it. 

Of course she had not wanted to go, and of course she had had to; and she could not regret it, for her Season had brought her Rey’s friendship. She did not know if Lord Alderaan knew of his friend’s foibles (Rey laughed a little at ‘foible’—what a term to use, for ruining a girl’s life!) but she would not have been surprised if he did. After all, his reputation (prior to marriage) had not been that of a kind man. Why would he care if Miss Paige Tico had been abused and thrown out of society? He would think it her fault, for being a trollop. And the worst of it, Rose said, was that he was probably right.

“But he is  _ not _ right,” Rey said aloud, rising indignantly to her feet. “If he knows—!”

* * *

It was perhaps unfortunate that, just at the moment Rey was beginning to feel true rage, Fighter had thrown a shoe. If he had not, Kylo would have stayed out longer—at least until the overcast skies began to truly threaten rain; he would have returned to find Rey simmered down, over the worst of her anger, and prepared to talk with some modicum of sense.

As it was, however, he bade the rest of the hunting party adieu and returned to the house. He thought perhaps he would find Rey staring out a window, or halfheartedly embroidering: he knew she had found the atmosphere slow. Well, he would enliven it! She might go over letters from Erso & Krennic with him, and tell him all the details he would need to know in order to respond sensibly; she would like that. Or, perhaps, he could arrange for a bath to be drawn…

These delicious thoughts were interrupted as he drew near the house. Rey had seen him coming from the window, had come down to meet him, slim as a whip and as beautiful as the spring in her riding habit, but he knew from the set of her shoulders that all was not well. She was as red as a radish, nearly apoplectic; she clutched a sheaf of papers in one hand and a riding crop in the other.

If Lord Alderaan had been as suave and dashing as some romantic gossips made him, he would have had some  _ bon mot  _ ready at hand to distract his wife. He did not. He fell back upon “I am glad you are so happy to see me,” and could hear in his sardonic tone all the anxiety and defensiveness that he felt.

“Come with me,” Rey said, “and read this.”

She led him not into the house, stuffed over-full with Hux’s guests’ ladies; they would be an attentive audience to any row, Kylo realized. Instead she marched past the marble Dian (Kylo was certain it was a fake; no classical sculptor would provide the Goddess of the Hunt with quite such enormous bosoms) and into a little clump of trees at the edge of the formal garden, where they were unlikely to be either seen or heard.

Kylo leaned against a tree while he read. The letter was written in a schoolgirl’s hand, pages crossed—exactly how he would have imagined a letter from Miss Rose Tico to appear. The first surprise was that his wife had not known from the beginning of Miss Rose’s family shame. They seemed such bosom-bows, and he had always heard that ladies shared their secrets with each other: and, after all, Miss Paige Tico’s bastard was hardly a  _ secret _ .

Then he thought harder, and realized what the letter implied—what secret his wife had been keeping from  _ him _ . Jyn Erso. She had asked him about the residents of Lah’mu House, but he had not thought much of it: he had revealed much to her about his childhood, and it was natural that she would want to know about his neighbors. The canal project was with Krennic and Erso—of course she would indulge her curiosity about them. But to actually meet with Miss Erso—and to ‘correspond with her under other names,’ what did that mean? Were they unfolding some illicit plan? Why else would they engage in such correspondence?

He could feel the beast in the pit of his stomach beginning to churn, to grow, that irresistable and insatiable beast that was his anger. He felt its fetters slipping, just as they always had when he was a snot-nosed boy in short coats, and he could not help himself. In his mind Rey and his mother seemed to blend into one great feminine monster: they were out of his control, and he could not make them see that their behavior caused _him_ pain, caused him to be beaten at school, caused him to be mocked as a bastard although he was _not_ illegitimate, caused him to have to defend them even when they were indefensible, because they were part of him, part of his household, Lord, part of his family and the great legacy for which he was responsible though he never asked for it, and wouldn’t Rey like to hear him say that, and yet here she was friends with the notorious Miss Jyn Erso and lying to her husband about it…!

While this storm raged within her husband, Rey stood very still and did not look at him. She did not want to interrupt him as he read through Paige Tico’s story; she did not want to stop him from developing whatever excuses he might, or stop him from building whatever defenses he could. She could not recognize what she was feeling as anger, as he did. In her it seemed to be merely righteous concern. How any man could bring his wife to visit a person who ruined young girls with no remorse, she could not fathom; how any man could keep that person as his friend, she did not know.

Wrapped in her self-righteousness she could not imagine any other view on the matter; so she was caught utterly off-guard when Lord Alderaan said, in icily cutting tones, “What does this chit mean when she says that you have been ‘corresponding in secret’ with Miss Jyn Erso?”

“What has that to do with the matter?” Rey responded, wrong-footed. “You have read of Lord Hux—”

“That old matter,” Alderaan scoffed, coming forward and seeming to puff up into a creature taller than he ever had been. “That has long ago been put to rest; but this matter, my girl, this matter is only just beginning. From the contents of this letter I gather that you know of Miss Erso’s reputation.”

“I am informed that no one in the world does not! But what, pray, does that have to do with the horrid, the, the  _ vicious _ conduct of a man you call friend?”

“You have no right to chuse my friends,” Alderaan said, ignoring the accusation entirely, “but I have the right to chuse yours, at least when they are likely to bring ruin to the family. And mark my words: Miss Erso’s father may be the finest engineer God ever made—not that that seems likely, given the failures attributed to him—but that does not excuse his daughter’s whoring!”

Had Kylo the ability to think, to consider for even one moment the words that came from his mouth, he would have expected Rey’s reaction to the term ‘whoring’ to be similar to his mother’s so many years ago, and half-dreaded it and half-luxuriated in the fact that something as simple as words could provoke such great tumults; but in point of fact that was not the element of his tirade that enraged her most. “Her  _ father _ may be the finest engineer!” Rey spat. “Her father! You are the very greatest fool in a world of fools. He has nothing to do with the canals! It is all her genius!”

“Add ‘liar’ to ‘whore,’ then,” Kylo spat back.

“At least I need not add ‘tempter,’ or ‘ruiner-of-virgins,’” Rey said. She could feel her hand clenched involuntarily at her side: she longed to smash her husband in his precious face, to break his overlarge nose, to make him feel even one quarter the pain of childbirth, of childrearing, of everything that women had been made to suffer at the hands of thoughtless men like him. 

“And your friend the back-biter, where is she in this? Will you tell me Miss Rose is a secret intellect as well? Does she practise medicine, say? Did she attend her sister’s lying-in?”

“Back-biter!” Rey ignored his volleys, tried to stick to the point. “You will never tell me she lied about Hux’s wickedness!”

“Lied—no; but it seems a particularly cruel act to bring up a regrettable incident, to turn you against my friends—”

“It can hardly be termed a ‘regrettable incident’ when Paige Tico is dead!” Rey shouted. “It is far more than ‘regrettable’! Even if she had torn her clothes off and danced naked before him, he need not have touched her!”

“She nearly  _ did _ , he tells me, and all to entrap him into marriage!”

“Then he should not have taken the bait!”

They glared at each other, sides heaving, in a sort of breathless detente. Rey gathered her wits, knowing that he was doing the same, as though they were two armies on either side of a battlefield rallying forces and counting their arrows: would they have enough? But she had the advantage: she was right. 

She could imagine Paige Tico’s face in her mind, like Rose’s but slimmer, a little more in the common run of beauty; she could imagine Jyn Erso as a girl, desperate for adventure beyond the confines of her family’s estate. She could imagine Lady Leia, unable to find her match among the nobility. She could, Lord help her, think of Lady Carise Sindian, playing with fire and not knowing how hot it burned, and of Kaydel Ko Connix, sure to be ejected from Almack’s next season for nothing more than riding too fast in Hyde Park. And with bitter certainty she could imagine her dear Finn, believing that Rose was beyond his touch because of her great good  _ ton _ , when in reality her parents would only bar his suit because they did not dare risk even the smallest transgression.

All these things she imagined, at once, if that were possible: she imagined these as her forces in the battle, and she knew they would win. As a challenge thrown out to the opposing army, then, she said, “You do not have the right to chuse my friends. I do not have the right to chuse yours. But I may tell you when one of your choices puts you beyond the pale.”

A wicked light entered her husband’s eye. “Very well; and I may do the same. And it has: and you are to be most strictly dealt with.”

“How strictly?” she asked, feigning calm as best she might. “Can you be strict with me, my lord?”

“I can and I will,” he said, “for in our marriage-lines it says that you will obey; and you  _ will  _ obey.”

“Other women may,” Rey said. “I will not—for I regret to inform you that I need you very much less than you need me.”

She meant, of course, that her fortune had been so bound-up that she might always have enough to draw upon at need; that she could flee to his mother’s in London and be sure of a welcome; and secretly, without saying it, that she carried the heir of Alderaan under her heart and therefore could nevermore be displaced. But now she could not tell him. He had revealed himself as the villain he always pretended to be, and she could not allow a child of hers to be raised by him, not as long as he espoused such views or as long as he recognized Armitage Hux. She knew full well that he was not a Gothic hero, but she had no doubt that if he was aware of the existence of his heir he would physically bind her in order to maintain control of the child.

Yet thinking all of this she still did not comprehend what her words meant to him. They were in a way the culmination of everything he had imagined about their marriage. And yet they also echoed back to that moment when he knew he had lost his mother’s good will, and could do nothing to change it, and that in truth she loved him less than he loved her, and always had.

“Is that what you think?” he said, slow and smoldering, a banked fire ready to burst into fresh flame any moment. “Is that truly what you believe?”

“It is,” she said, refusing to back down, trying to make herself as tall as possible and knowing that there was no possible way to stand up to his sheer size. “I do not need you.”

“You will be thrown out of society,” he said, and even as he spoke he could hear the echo of his marriage proposal in his ears, the foolish awful words that he had been so grateful she had ignored. “Lady Snoke will not receive you. Mrs Phasma will not receive you. You will never speak to Miss Rose Tico again!”

And Rey laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He had never seen that hysterical light in her eyes before, and for a moment it nearly frightened him. Had she become a madwoman? Was this how they were made, out of arguments with husbands who would not give the ladies their way? But she seemed to come back to her senses after a moment, and said, “Very well. You may have my marriage-portion to pay your debts to Lady Snoke. It is yours legally and I cannot begrudge it to you; you played me fair and square. For myself I shall never speak to anyone again, yourself included. You will excuse me, therefore, if I do not take leave of my hosts.”

She turned on her heel. How did she learn of his debts, and how could she throw them in his face as a goad? How dare she suggest he had married her for money? Where was she going now? He could not imagine. By instinct more than volition he reached out to grab her, to force her to stay, to insist that they finish this argument and that she submit to his will—and something lashed out and stung him across the face.

In the moment it felt like a viper’s bite. In truth it was Rey’s riding-crop, forgotten in her hand until she felt herself restrained. His grip on her relaxed, and they both paused for a moment, stunned, as the blood dripped down his forehead. Cuts on the face always do bleed a lot, he thought, suddenly very aware of himself and the little clump of trees and Hux’s garden steps away. It’s a miracle she didn’t ruin my eye.

Rey made some incoherent, strangled noise, picked up her skirts, and ran for the stables. Kylo made no attempt to follow.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNING in the endnotes!

Force whinnied gently, then louder, sensing Rey’s anxiety as she entered the stall. The grooms hadn't seen her; no one had. She had never prepared a horse to be ridden on her own before, had always relied on grooms; but she had watched them carefully and she was sure she could do it, though her riding habit was hardly conducive to slinging a heavy saddle across a tall mare's back. 

“Your Grace?” a wan stableboy asked as she led Force out into the sunlight, “You never called for me; did you?” His voice was anxious. Hux was not kind to servants who were inattentive to his guests.

“No,” she said, unable to hide the anger that still colored her voice, “I did not.” The stableboy blanched and scurried away, as though she might hit him: some part of her was embarrassed that he feared her, but another part knew he was right. She _had_ hit someone, moments before, with a riding crop, and she only hoped she had scarred him for life!

A block served to help her mount Force, but before she gave the command to go she called the stableboy back. He came, cringing; she fished in her purse and produced several coins, dropping them into his hands and ignoring his suddenly boggled expression. “Keep one of those,” she instructed him. “The rest go to Bebe, my maid. She is the one who is actually French. Do you know her?” He nodded. “Tell her to go to Lady Leia's house as quickly and quietly as she can. Tell no one else of this. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, his eyes still large as moons in his scrawny face. He barely managed to scramble out of the way as she kicked the horse into motion.

Rey felt the sort of deep certainty that comes only when you have had a very great shock. She thought carefully about her plans as she rode. Duke's Alderaan was on the way to London, and if the stableboy was untrustworthy, he would not point her husband there immediately. Riding hard, she could just make it that night; then she could rest a few hours and change her clothes for something less conspicuous, change horses and continue on.

She ran through these plans in her mind for the first hour; for the second hour, she considered the possibility of riding only to a city and then changing to a post-chaise, which would be more anonymous and less strenuous. By the third hour, she had begun to realize how long the journey would be.

In the fourth hour it began to rain. After that the time began to blur together for Rey. She passed fewer people on the road; who would travel in such weather? Ostlers called out to her from post-houses as she passed through villages; she ignored them. A woman alone, wearing a fine if bedraggled riding habit and mounted on a beautiful if much-abused horse, was vulnerable, and she was determined.

Slowly she became aware that this journey might constitute cruelty to Force. That thought, which came just as she passed from tiredness into exhaustion, nearly convinced her to turn aside at an inn; but as she entered the next village some hayseed shouted “Oi, milady, come down from that horse and have a better time with me, eh?” and made a vulgar gesture. She did not stop. The day passed into night.

She was very near Duke’s Alderaan when the rain began to slow, and she almost thought she might make it, though her wet skirts had chafed her thighs and the chill of the evening had soaked into her bones; but the reprieve was short. Fresh clouds came to relieve their fellows and brought with them new sheets of rain, drops so piercingly hard that Rey found herself crying when they hit; and then the thunder rolled and Force shuddered.

Rey could feel the trembling in her mount's muscles even once the thunder was gone. The horse was past the edge of tiredness. That might make some horses pliable, but not Force: that much Rey knew without ever having tested it. Rey hoped desperately that she had not ruined Force for good. They were close enough to Duke’s Alderaan that if Rey had not been so exhausted herself she would have dismounted, to save the horse's back; but she feared she could not even stand on her own two feet.

The path was long and winding; Capability Brown had designed it more for romantical views than efficient travel. Fortunately Rey had spent weeks going over the grounds with a fine-tooth comb, and felt more than confident taking a more direct route, through the forest. It was very dark and the going was slow, with clouds hiding the moon and stars, but the trees’ canopies protected them from the worst of the rain; as long as those canopies lasted. Soon Rey and Force emerged into a hidden meadow, with one great old oak in its center.

Rey nearly cried with relief. She knew where she was: it was only perhaps ten minutes’ walk to the old ruined church, and from there to Duke's Alderaan's kitchen gardens. Grateful, she urged Force on through the open space.

Then the world went crazy. There was a flash of light and a sound so loud she could hardly comprehend it. The horse bucked under her with a power and liveliness she would not have believed possible, not after such a long journey. The air was cold and the wind was on her face, and she felt herself flying.

Then nothing.

* * *

It was very cold. Rey could not feel her extremities.

This was not how it ought to be.

She had fallen from her horse.

That knowledge came back to her with a jolt. She sat up, slowly, feeling her way. It was dawn, but the sky was still dark with clouds. More rain? But how could she see the sky—the oak’s canopy should have blotted it out—

The oak was gone. Rather, it had been transformed into a ruin rivaling Duke’s Alderaan itself. It had fallen across half the clearing, its stump half-burnt and half-raw, the white inside exposed. The lightning had shattered its bark as though it were made of glass.

She could not stay here. She was too cold. She forced herself to her feet and forced herself to walk forward, stumbling, and to climb over the fallen tree, catching her sodden riding-habit in its branches and struggling to tear free. She knew which direction Duke’s Alderaan was. It was not far. Force would have gone there, if Force were alive; they would know something was wrong…

It began to rain again as Rey walked, ever so slowly. She was very ill. She had made herself very ill. She could not think in a straight line. She brushed against a tree and felt a deep pain in her arm; looking down, she saw a thick splinter embedded there. Like a sailor, she thought, incongruously: sailors were for ever being killed by splinters, when cannonballs struck their ships. Poe had been struck by one once. He had told her. He had feared blood-poisoning. She feared it too.

Then she was at a stone wall, and for a moment she thought it was Duke’s Alderaan itself. Staring at it, her nose six inches away, she realized the stones were too small and old. This was the church. 

It would have to do. She could go no further, and though the rain could hardly make her wetter she thought that it was doing her no good. She crawled through the side-door, cringing when she struck the splinter again, and dragged herself a little ways in. Then she let herself rest. She could walk the rest of the way to Duke’s Alderaan when the rain stopped. It would only be a little while.

* * *

Rey's mother bent over her.

“All right, my—”

The world was too bright; she covered her face.

* * *

Rey's mother sang to her. “Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, rosemary's green, when you are King, dilly dilly, I shall be Queen…”

You won't be Queen, Rey wanted to say, because I won't be King, because I am a girl, and you are my mother, and we already have a King.

But she found she couldn't speak, and in any case the problems ran deeper than that: it was not Rey's mother, though she had brown hair shot with grey just as Rey imagined her mother would. But she was like a mother. She was in Rey's bed and she was rocking her, rocking her gently, and singing, “Rosemary's green, dilly dilly, lavender's blue, you must love me, dilly dilly, for I love you…”

Rey buried her face in her not-mother's thin bosom and stopped wondering about the song and the person and everything else. Her back hurt, and her arm, as though a spike were through it. “Come now, look up,” her not-mother said, and she obeyed; a cool spoon was pressed between her lips, and she took her medicine, bitter as it was, and fell asleep to the sound of “Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so…?”

* * *

There was something unpleasant and marshy in the bed, as though the rainstorm had come indoors with Rey. But it was curious: she did not remember going anyplace that there was a bed. Kind hands urged her up and she realized she was very hot, and her sweat was part of the marshiness; they urged her to a chamber pot, and she realized that blood was part of the marshiness too. But she could not find it in herself to care very much about any of it, except to say “I am wet,” and cooing voices told her that she was, and giving her more bitter medicine, and then she fell asleep again in all the miserable moisture.

* * *

A doctor had a flechette, and tried to nock Rey’s arm with it; she twisted away and succeeded only in causing him to draw a red line around her elbow, as though he had painted on her, but it was not paint. She felt the cut as if from a long way away, outside her body, which also made it difficult to fight him. Then there was Jyn Erso in the doorway, exclaiming, and the doctor turned and made angry gestures. Why was Miss Erso there?

Mrs. Dodd came and the doctor went away. They bandaged her arm and it ached, it ached, her other arm ached, and her belly ached and her head ached, and she was all a-sweat again, and they told her to lie still and drink cool water and eat a little gruel. But she was asleep again before she could eat much.

* * *

Something squirmed at Rey’s side—something very small, very hot, a living hot-water bottle, just the size of an infant. She blinked bleary eyes open and found a small black pillow had snuggled up into the curve of her waist; the pillow extended a long, elegant neck over her stomach and looked at her with soulful brown eyes.

“Mordred,” she said, “are you a good dog, bearing me company?”

He did not answer, and she remembered (after a moment) that she could not expect him to.

* * *

Rey woke up and felt that she was actually awake for the first time, perhaps the first time in her life. She was lying in her room at Duke’s Alderaan, with its white walls and simple furnishings. She turned her head, slowly, and saw that outside it was a cloudy hazy day, but there was no rain.

She moved her hands and touched her stomach. It did not hurt. She knew that she was not pregnant any more.

Grief crashed in on her like a stampede of horses. Tears rose in her throat and her eyes but she could not breathe well enough to cry; her lungs seemed to seize as she tried to gasp in the breaths that would let her howl, truly howl. She had never imagined the baby before but now she could see it plainly: a little girl, with brown hair and a Roman nose, someday to be tall as her father and never a beauty, but smart and driven and as strong as an ox—

“ _Madame!_ ” Rey could not understand the torrents of French that poured out of Bebe as she burst into the room, not in her fuzzy-headed state, but she could understand Bebe's arms encircling her thin shoulders and propping her up on the pillows so she breathed easier. Then Bebe kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed next to her and held her, just held her, until the convulsive tears passed and Rey could once again speak.

“I was ill,” she said.

“Yes, yes,” Bebe said, in her comically thick accent, smoothing Rey’s hair from her face. She realized it was scraggling all down her shoulders, lank and unwashed, and felt suddenly unclean. Her arm was bandaged, she realized, and the bandage needed changing.

“May I have a bath?” she asked, forgetting for a moment that she was the Duchess of Alderaan and Bebe was her dresser.

“ _Oui, madame!_ ”

Bebe called for Bess and Anandra and the tub and the water. It was nearly boiling and Rey thought they must have run from the kitchens, struggled up the stairs—she found herself apologizing to them, as they stared, unsure of how to react to this strange creature. She knew she wasn’t helping, only making them uncomfortable, but she had no barriers between her thoughts and her words any more. She was too tired and too filthy and too ill. She was grateful when Bebe chased them away.

* * *

After her bath Rey felt lonely and desperate, and too sad to speak. She sat in her bed, now covered in blessedly clean linens, and stared out a window at a little patch of sky, and thought about what had happened. She remembered it all; she knew that people were thrown from horses and hit their heads and forgot things, but she was not in this class. 

It was the bath that made her maudlin, she supposed, how Bebe had so carefully unwound the bandage on her arm, tutting gently over the scabby weeping cut she found there, so small considering how much it had hurt. The bath reminded her of how Kylo had bathed her, so gently, and how she had felt so cared-for and loved. When she had left Lord Hux’s hunting box she had thought all his kindnesses false coin, but now she was not so sure. When she had married him she had wondered at the fact that he was both cruel and kind, that he held vile beliefs and yet was capable of great compassion. She had lost track of the cruelty at first, and then lost track of the kindness: but the fact was that her husband was capable of both.

But he had not been the one to bathe her, and she did not remember seeing him, not once during the hazy days of her illness. (How many days? She had no confidence in her own recollection.) Perhaps he had not come after her at all.

This idea horrified her, in a way she could hardly articulate. She had not _wanted_ him to come after her, of that she was certain. She had never been the sort of simpering miss to run away as a coy way of asking to be chased. She had imagined never seeing her husband again and relished the thought. Yet now when she considered the possibility that she had been lying ill for days or weeks and Kylo had been so angry with her, so unforgiving, as to abandon her entirely—she had to admit that it was plausible.

If he had not come, then he did not know about the child she had lost. She would never have to tell him; he would let her go. Perhaps he would divorce her. It would be a scandal, but at least it would all be over then. If it was not already over.

Something was wrong with this picture, however, and it took her time to determine what: Mordred. Mordred had been with her while she was ill. She had not taken him with her; he could never have ridden Force, unless he were in a basket, and if he were in a basket he would have drowned in the torrential rains, and—her mind was spinning in circles, but the center was always the same: Mordred meant that Kylo knew where she was.

This prompted a new set of worries; but before she could indulge herself in much contemplation of them, the door opened and the dog himself bounded into the room. He was sleek and slim as ever, and he had no compunction about jumping onto the bed and vigorously washing her face with his tongue. “I know, I likely still taste of sweat,” she mumbled to him, trying to put him aside. “Does no one teach you manners, dog?”

“Not I,” said Jyn Erso, who had slipped into the room behind him. “He is not _my_ dog; and I don’t care for standoffish animals in any case. Give me a creature who loves me and shows it!”

“I’m afraid I can never thank you enough,” Rey said, “and I must apologize—I think I was quite delirious.”

Jyn sat on the end of the bed and called Mordred over. He came happily, wedging himself between Jyn’s hip and Rey’s feet as though they were two pillows created just for him, and lying down with a sigh of contentment. “You were. You have been ill for quite a fortnight,” she said. “Do you recall what brought you to Duke’s Alderaan—and what happened?”

“You must know I fought with His Grace.”

“Yes, well, I could hardly miss it,” Jyn said tartly. “What I mean is, do you recall what befell you?”

“There was lightning,” Rey said. “Force shied. Did she come home?”

“That was how Mrs. Dodd knew to look for you,” Jyn said. “They found her in the stables the morning after the storm, still saddled. She was very badly treated, Rey.”

“I know,” she said, ashamed. “I ought not to have used her that way. But Jyn, you cannot imagine the nest of vipers—” her own words seemed childish in her mouth. It might have been a heroic and romantical feat, to ride home from Lord Hux’s hunting box, if she had succeeded in it; but she had not succeeded. She had nearly died, and nearly killed her horse, and perhaps she _had_ killed her child. “I could not stay,” she finished, abruptly.

“I won’t remonstrate with you,” Jyn said. “I am not your mother or your husband.”

“Husband.”

“Oh yes. He’s here; I suppose you must know that.”

“Mordred told me.” Jyn smiled a little, and it was a great relief to Rey; she had feared, for a moment, that Jyn judged her harshly, though why Jyn would have spent days and days nursing her if that were the case she could not say. “I thought you were my mother, though, when I was ill.”

“Very flattering, I’m sure,” Jyn said.

“No—she was a whore, I think.”

“And so am I, they say. And perhaps she didn’t love you like she ought. But I trust you know now that if _she_ didn’t love you, others do.” This last was delivered with such matter-of-factness, such a complete lack of sentiment, that its meaning might have been lost on another girl. It was not lost on Rey.

“Thank you,” she said.

“No need,” Jyn replied. “If I can’t do for Letty—but that is beside the point. The doctor said that once you woke up and stayed up for more than a few minutes, you would be very much on the mend; do you think you could manage some beef tea?”

Rey said that she could, and was grateful for it when it came, hot and rich, filling and thirst-quenching. Then she felt strong enough to ask, “has His Grace visited me?”

Jyn, who had occupied herself with a book while Rey ate, glanced up over a pair of half-moon spectacles. “Only once,” she said.

“Is he—very angry?”

“I could not say, not knowing him well.”

“He let you stay here, however?”

“As you see.”

“What happened?”

Jyn set her book aside, laying her glasses carefully atop it, and said, “While you were away, Mrs. Dodd and I came to something of an understanding. Some questions came up about the canal; I did not trust my bailiff to answer them, for it was his surveys that led to the issue—a matter of some numbers not adding up. So I came to the house the morning after the storm, to tell her that I would be out and about on the land, and to warn Bullock and Turnbull.”

Jyn had found the house in disorder, Mr Albemarle having led a search-party out and not yet having returned, and the stable hands all outraged over Force’s treatment; Mrs Dodd had told her what had occurred, and she had tried to bring some order to the house. It was a long and weary wait; the search-party had found the lightning-struck oak, but no sign of Rey; and it was not until after supper that a boy named Milton had come running up to the house in a tearing hurry, and had told them that the Duchess had been found.

“I will say that you have all the instincts of an actress,” Jyn said, “for you had draped yourself across a tomb most artistically. Fundamentally you were sound, although the wound in your arm was worrisome; it was not until the next day that you began to show signs of what the doctor called pleuro-pneumonia.”

“When did my husband come?”

“Not for a week after—and by then you were insensible.”

“Not entirely,” Rey said slowly. “I was sensible of my miscarriage. Although I think you must have fed me an entire poppy-field of laudanum, so it took me some time to understand.”

Jyn pressed her lips together. “Did Lord Alderaan know of your pregnancy?”

“No.”

She bowed her head. “We did right then,” she said. “Bebe said you had not told him; and I instructed the household to keep it secret. For all he said you had quarreled, it seemed cruel to add a second grief to his burden.”

Questions multiplied in Rey’s mind. How had he responded to finding Jyn in his house? How had he seen his way clear to allowing her to stay? Why did Jyn treat him as a pitiable creature? Why had he not come to her? How did he expect them to proceed?

Then Jyn said: “He will surely come to see you some day; and you ought to know that the whip-weal you gave him is like to scar.”

That seemed to answer some of the questions in Rey’s mind. Their argument and especially her parting shot _had_ been the end of things. Her vain, anxious husband would never tolerate a scar; he would never tolerate the woman who had given it to him. And he deserved it: he deserved it for all he had done to so many innocents!

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, and turned her face away, trying to convince herself that she was relieved to know she had succeeded in driving His Grace of Alderaan away for ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter depicts a fall from a horse, a miscarriage, bloodletting, and serious illness, in great detail. If you aren't up for all that, please skip this chapter (you can guess who these things happen to...!) and head on into the next one.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's French is brought to you by anatsuno, who extremely kindly pinch-hit when my usual French translator's home state was hit by a hurricane.

“I will not go,” Miss Erso said.

Kylo felt that he had become more used to hearing “I will not” in the past four months than at any other time in his life.

He stood in his private sitting room at Duke’s Alderaan—less private now than ever before. His wife was mewed up in her bedchamber, which communicated with this room by a door, and which he was not at all sure that he would be permitted into. Even if he were permitted in, she might not wish to see him, and all because he had defended his oldest friend; but the great irony was that he had already decided that he had been wrong to do so, and that he ought to have been governed by his wife.

His wife, who now lay insensible, but whose last act had been to whip him, to scar him for ever.

“You have no right to be here,” he said, staring down his adversary.

She was a tall woman and a thin one, made more of sinew than anything else, and her sensible mobcap hid greying hair. She had a face that was clearly once beautiful, but now reduced to its barest components by age. This, then, was Jyn Erso, the woman he had so deplored. There was nothing to like there, except her mulish devotion to Rey. _That_ Kylo could fully endorse.

“I have the right of a friend to be here,” she said, “and based on Rey’s murmurings, I think she would prefer to be nursed by me than by you—if you are even capable of nursing.”

She was right, of course. He knew nothing of jellies and teas and tisanes, was disgusted by the contents of chamber pots, and could not change a bed even if an invalid were _not_ firmly established in it. Miss Erso, on the other hand, was clearly more than capable, and had been serving in just such a position for the past week, while he had run from Melton Mowbray to London like the world’s biggest booby.

* * *

At the conclusion of his quarrel with Rey, he had thought it very likely that she would take her leave of Lord Hux’s establishment, but he had not imagined that she would attempt to go anywhere without her luggage. As he had made his slow way back to the main house, trying to prevent blood from getting onto his cravat, he had seen her ride out on Force; he had thought nothing of it. When his blood was up he needed exercise; surely Rey was the same.

He had been unable to convince any one that his injury had been the result of an accident. He had never been a good liar. Fortunately the laws of society did not permit his friends to inquire too deeply into the source of their argument; but he could see the glimmer of amusement in Mrs. Phasma’s eye as she exclaimed over ‘ _such_ poor luck, my dearest Alderaan, you never have had much fortune, have you,’ and could hear the double entendre as well as haughty Hux did.

“Who could expect any thing else of such a Friday-faced chit?” Hux murmured languidly. “Do you recall, we used to call her the ‘Incomparable’? Incomparably stuffy, I should think. No surprise she’d find something to tax you with; I’m only amazed she had the gumption to strike you at all. You’ve had to deal with her more, Gwendoline—what would you say?”

Raising her attention from Kylo’s wound, Phasma uttered, ”Oh—I had quite the opposite impression. A greater romp I never knew. She needs someone to take her in hand, and it is clear you are not doing so, Ren.”

She murmured something about finding some cloths and making sure that the housekeeper had called for the right doctor, and excused herself, which left Kylo rather too exposed to Hux’s curiosity. “Now tell me,” he said, as soon as the door closed behind the matron, “Was the quarrel over Gwennie—or someone else?”

Kylo could not resist this opportunity. “It was over you, my dearest Hux,” he said.

“Why! What ever could she object to in me?”

Archness did not set Hux off to advantage. “Your treatment of Miss Paige Tico,” Kylo said.

Hux burst into laughter. “What flummery! —Really, Ren, she could not.”

“She could,” Kylo said, and felt himself being drawn into Hux’s mocking orbit. “She felt very much that the lady had been ill-used.”

“How one can ill-use a light-skirt I’ll never know! My God, is she your wife or a vicar? I hope you told her that the little trollop was begging me for it, and I only obliging her, as any gentleman ought to do for a lady.”

“I believe the objection was what you did afterward—or what you did not do.”

“She truly believed that I ought to marry a purse-pinched little bit of muslin like that? Damme, Ren, are you sure she wasn’t raised by some Cit? For her morals ain’t what they ought to be, in her position. What must she expect from _you_? Home every night and a good-night kiss?”

It was fortunate that just at that moment Mrs. Phasma returned; for Kylo did not know how he would respond. He was sensible, as he sat and waited for the doctor and allowed Hux to pour brandy down him and Mrs. Phasma to put cool cloths to his brow, that a sea-change had taken place inside of him. It was as though the whip across his face had struck some deep infection and lanced it, as though it had woken him from some hysterical fit. He had begun his argument with his wife in defense of Armitage Hux; but that position was insupportable. The bonds of friendship were too deep for him ever to cut Hux entirely, but Rey had been right to be outraged at Hux’s behavior: it was great hypocrisy not to be.

Or, perhaps, the problem was not with accepting Hux but with cutting Miss Paige Tico. Or it was both; it could not be neither.

Something was awry. Something had gone wrong within his judgment. He knew it now. But to identify it he would need to begin from first principles. He tried to consider these and found it impossible as the doctor stitched his face. It was harder still when he received the news that he would have a dreadful scar with which to remember this inglorious day. “I recommend,” the doctor said, acerbically, “that you invent a duel.”

“I have no need to invent a duel,” Kylo snarled, forgetting himself. “I am famous for duelling.”

Indeed, he could already imagine the _on dit_ in London. It had not been so very long since his father’s death: the newest crop of society misses would see his face and assume that the ugly red line that now bisected it was a souvenir of that fatal fight. All the world might know it was an accident, but they would still spread the rumor that it was not: and in ten or twenty years’ time, the Dark Duke would be a story with which to scare children.

Well, let it be so! If Kylo were to be abandoned by his wife and shunned by his family, mocked by his friends and tormented by his conscience, he rather thought he would like to do it in style. If he could not be quietly respectable, or wonderfully fashionable, he would be infamous, and damn the consequences!

Even as he indulged himself in this phantasy, he heard Rey in his mind: “Oh, you _are_ Gothic! And you’re your mother’s son, no doubt. She must have said just the same thing when she married your father!”

Just as the doctor finished his work, there was another hullaballoo: a stable-boy had been discovered with a purse of coins, and when questioned, revealed that he had received them from the Duchess of Alderaan. He was adamant that they were not stolen; he had only been caught with them because he had gone into the house to deliver them just as the Duchess had said, “and I haven’t done not one thing wrong, my lords, I surely have not, for how was I to know the lady was off her head?”

Kylo thought that anyone who looked at Rey in those minutes after their argument could have seen that she was not in her senses; but he did not suppose that a stable-boy could be counted on to defy a duchess. Rey had left the money for Bebe, with instructions to travel on to London. That was straightforward enough. Of course Rey would fly to Lady Leia’s in time of trouble, and she had received correspondence from Kylo’s mother only that morning, along with her letter from Miss Rose. He would follow her in the morning.

He began to doubt, however, that this plan could possibly have been enacted, when he passed two stages on the way to London with no word of Rey and no sign of Force. Rey would have been a remarkable figure, traveling in her sumptuous riding-habit without any escort. Mounted on Force she ought to have been unmissable. No amount of bribery could have generated the blank looks Kylo received from ostlers and tapsters alike: they truly had not seen her.Their progress was slow, him having been obliged to bring his valet and Bebe and Mordred with him, and he found it intensely vexing to be forced to put up at an inn for the night. If she was not in London, he would have wasted so much time!

London was another case altogether. He had not expected her at his townhouse, and indeed she was not there, but it was annoying to see Mordred explore the place as though he hoped to find his mistress—and mope when she was nowhere to be found. “Are you my dog or hers?” he found himself snapping, and regretting it when Mordred shied from his touch.

She was not at the townhouse, but she was not at Lady Leia’s either. He had arrived in London very late, and decided to let his mother have an unbroken night of sleep; in the morning he burst past Threepio just as the lady of the house was sitting down to breakfast, joined by her dear friend Countess Holdo.

Unfortunately for him, two old biddies of greater countenance there never were. He made his demand for Rey; he was met by level gazes. His mother remained silent, perhaps contemptuous, perhaps pitying. “If she were here,” Countess Holdo asked, after a silence that went far beyond the comfortable, “do you suppose we would disclose it to you?”

“Hardly,” Kylo was forced to admit.

“Which leads me to wonder why you are here, Benjamin,” his mother said, as much an antidote as ever. “Or rather, why you are here and not raging about throwing things. Not that it would have much effect on me, any more than your father’s little intemperacies ever did; but you always have _imagined_ it to be effectual.”

This show of calm indifference was brave, but hardly convincing: Kylo could never forget the time when his rages had been extremely effectual, had in fact effected the unbridgeable gap between himself and his family. “I’ve driven her away,” he said. “I thought it my duty to try and bring her back.”

To say such a thing, bluntly and without dramatics, felt manly and bold; but if Kylo could have stood outside himself, seen himself as his mother saw him, he would have had a very different understanding of his situation. From the ladies’ viewpoint he seemed like nothing more than a child who, having broken a vase, does not try to cover up his error but instead submits himself to punishment, feeling that he deserves it for letting his parents down. Indeed they were more perceptive than he: it was this very instinct, long repressed, which had been awakened in him.

“So it is,” his mother said, “and for that I wish I could help you; but I can’t, except that if you tell me how you quarrelled, perhaps I can tell you where you went wrong.”

That far Kylo could not go, even had Countess Holdo not been sitting primly at the breakfast-table, sipping her tea with an expression of amusement. He knew where he had gone wrong; Rey had not been shy about telling him. The question was whether mending it would be within his power, and whether it would require too much of his pride.

* * *

It was not until two days later that he had received word from Duke’s Alderaan that Rey had been found. He was closeted with Lady Snoke, in fact, strategizing about how best to find her, and when the paper was delivered into his hands he found them shaking. It was possible, he suddenly thought, that she had died.

She had not died, not yet, but it was a near thing. She had been found huddled next to a tomb in the old church on the edge of the gardens. She had been thrown from her horse, had somehow gotten pierced by a splinter of wood, had been out all night in the freezing rain. She had not been expected to do as well as she had.

Kylo read the letter twice. It had been sent to Melton Mowbray and only then followed him to London—he was filled with rage at the delay. Lady Snoke, seeing something of his feelings in his face, stood and saw herself out without a word. Kylo barely noticed. He could envision the accident—could see her thrown from her horse, see her falling, see her landing and barely (thank God!) escaping the fatal blow. He could see in his mind’s eye how she had dragged herself to the old church, and he could see exactly where she had been found. It would have beggared a novelist’s imagination to come up with such a fatal coincidence.

When he had been six his mother had taken him to that desanctified place. She had taken a key and unlocked the great front door. Having been raised in a ruin he had no fear of hauntings, but something in her demeanor told him that this was a serious matter, and so he had done his best to keep quiet and calm as he followed her inside.

Every thing movable had been removed from inside the sanctuary, so that it looked bare and eerie, even at mid-day. Where a cross ought to have hung there was nothing; and while it was possible that stained glass still enlivened the great circular window above the altar, it had been boarded up, and no colors shone in. Where beams of sunlight broke the gloom, motes of dust danced; and generally they danced above tombs.

These were the old sort of tombs, great raised boxes in the church itself. He supposed there were corpses in the boxes, and that most of them were nothing but skeletons: he knew that after many years a body turned into a skeleton. Some of them looked as though they were from the way-way-back, from King Arthur’s court perhaps. “Are these our ancestors, Mother?” he asked.

“Well—no,” she told him, looking a little surprised. “And yes: they are the Dukes of Alderaan. But you know that Grandfather adopted me, that I was not his child when I was born—yes?”

“He adopted you, and a farmer adopted Uncle Luke,” Ben recited, as he’d been taught, “and that’s why I am the Duke of Alderaan; but if the farmer had adopted you, I’d be nobody.”

“Not _nobody_ ,” Leia clarified. “You would be a farmer, and a very good one too, I’m sure. But listen, Ben. The Dukes of Alderaan are your ancestors, because you were adopted into them. But the lady who was buried here—she is your blood.”

The tomb his mother pointed out looked no newer than the rest. “Was she a princess like Guenivere?” he asked.

Leia smiled. “Something like, but it was not so long ago. The tomb is very old, you’re right. It’s from a little after the Knights of the Round Table. But no one ever used it then. When my mother was pregnant with me and with Luke, she was very afraid of my father. So she ran away from him. And Grandfather and Grandmother took her in, and when she died, they buried her here, in this old tomb, where he could never find her.”

He had run his hands over the stony face of the brittle old woman laid out in effigy there, wondering if she looked at all like his grandmother, whose bones were lying just beneath a scrim of stone. Sometimes when he was older he would imagine her, his true grandmother, haunting the church; but then he would recall that it was a stupid story and that he didn’t believe in ghosts, and he would shake his head and laugh at himself as best he could.

The last time he had been there, it had been ten years ago at least. Turnbull had needed to repair the transept door, which kept being kicked or blown in by someone or something, and Lord Alderaan kept the only key; so he was called upon to oversee the work. As Turnbull had sawed and nailed and whistled without a tune, Kylo had examined the grave.

It was very much as he had remembered it, the effigy horribly skeletal yet visibly feminine, the box upon which it rested just the size for a woman’s corpse. But when he was six he had not been able to see the flat piece of marble the effigy seemed to hold in her ghastly hands: he was too small. Today he could see it, and read what had been carved on it.

PADMÉ AMIDALA NABERRIE  
DIPLOMAT, FRIEND, AND MOTHER  
REQUIESCAT IN PACE

 _Diplomat;_ this he had never heard. But by then he did not consider it possible to ask Leia for an explanation.

Still, he knew very well that this must have been the tomb Rey had huddled next to. Fate would not have put her by some medieval knight, or by the altarpiece. No: without even knowing it Rey had sought out one more woman dead in childbirth, one more woman terrorized and abandoned by the man responsible for her state.

It was precisely the thing to play upon his guilt and shame. He called for his carriage at once.

* * *

It is a long way from London to Duke’s Alderaan, and just as grief passes quickly for the young, so do all other emotions. It was not precisely that Kylo stopped feeling that he had done wrong. He knew he had. It was not that he no longer saw the hypocrisy in his respective treatment of Lord Hux and Paige Tico. He knew he had been a hypocrite. But Kylo was obliged to ride in a carriage, not on Fighter, both because Fighter had been worked rather too hard of late and because he needed to bring Bebe and Mordred up to Duke’s Alderaan (Rey would certainly want her dresser and her dog with her when she came to). Therefore he spent many hours staring out the carriage window, bored and dull and more than a little queasy. He was glad that Bebe did not realize he spoke French. He did not think he could endure the conversation of a lady’s maid.

Riding in a carriage, then, and growing ever more peevish, Kylo began to think of how perfectly the stars had aligned to manipulate his emotions. Rey could not be blamed for seeking whatever shelter from the storm she might find—yet he could not be easy with it. Surely Lady Leia had not told her of his grandmother’s grave? Surely (this thought horrified him, for reasons he could not articulate) Rey did not know more of his own family than he did?

It was not possible; he knew it was not possible. Yet the idea stayed half-formed in his mind, that this was one more trick played upon him, just as Lady Carise Sindian and all the other chits had tried their arts of persuasion to get him to the altar. Rey had never consciously tricked him in that way; but that did not mean that she was not capable of it, surely…

This was the mood in which he came to Duke’s Alderaan, standing black-burnt against a perversely clear sky, the trees beginning to turn their colors around it and suggesting the blaze that had turned it into such a falling-down old thing. “Burn it down, all of it,” came the thought unbidden to his mind, “burn the house and the life and even Rey—” for if she died in her fever, what then? What would he have left to him?

Her money; that was the answer.

It was not a satisfying answer.

It was not satisfying, either, to take the stairs two-at-a time and fling himself across the threshold of his private sitting room to be confronted with an aging lady he did not know, carrying a bowl of bloody bandages away, which filled him with anxiety; and it was even less satisfying to learn that this woman was Jyn Erso, the very root of their argument, and that she had no intention of leaving Duke’s Alderaan until Rey was on the mend.

* * *

He lost the argument in the end.

It was not that Miss Erso was such an immovable object, though she was. It was the way that Rey appeared, lying there in her bed in utter stillness.

He was told that she was sleeping, and that she was very feverish still; it was to be hoped that her slumber was healing and not dangerous, but (as Miss Erso said) it was impossible to know. The doctor had been called, and had bled her, but she had protested; and they had sent him away, thinking that there was not much more blood left for her to lose.

The room was not at all like a sick-room: the drapes were drawn back, letting sunlight spill across Rey’s face. The light made the room appear very white and very clean, almost angelic; but on the bed the white linens lay like the draperies on Padmé Amidala Naberrie’s tomb. Rey was laid in her bower with her arms outstretched, one bandaged from the blood-letting, and the other bandaged higher up where she had been struck by a splinter. Her skin was as white as the bandages and as white as the linens on which she lay, and even appeared translucent, blue-veined, truly like marble.

Kylo felt a great black hulking thing in this room, where he had come to see his wife so many times; he felt like a living stain upon her goodness and purity. And yet Miss Erso hovered over Rey like a hen with one chick—Miss Erso, whom he had excoriated as a whore and a slattern—

He was angry and sad and utterly, utterly helpless in the face of sickness and accident. He did not want to touch her, did not want to risk that she might wake and say something that would put an end to their marriage for ever; but he could not stop his knees from giving way. He rested his arms on the edge of her bed as he might rest his arms on a church-rail, and held his head in his hands, and wept, and he did not stop Miss Erso from placing a motherly hand on his shoulder and another on his hair and telling him that all would be well.

* * *

Those tears might have cleared his mind, and allowed him to come to a complete understanding of himself; he might then have retired to his library and gone about the long hard work of starting from first principles, as he knew he ought, and attempting at least to consciously redefine his moral code (though what he thought unconsciously would surely take many years to change). But he had brought Bebe up from town with him, and she had followed him up the stairs.

Jyn left him alone with his wife and his grief for a bare moment when the maid came in with Mordred; he heard their low voices in the sitting-room. Jyn spoke too softly for him to make out, but Bebe could not restrain herself, even with her mistress stricken: he caught clearly “Oh ! Sa Grâce ne parle pas le français, Mademoiselle ; s’il le parlait, je le saurais. _”_

“Voilà qui facilite les choses, _”_ Jyn replied, her voice louder now that she thought herself safe. “Le maître savait-il que sa femme attendait un enfant ?”

Kylo barely breathed.

“Non, Mademoiselle,” Bebe said. “Seigneur ! A-t-elle perdu l’enfant ?”

“Dès les premières heures,” Jyn said. “C’est pour cette raison qu’elle est si pâle – vous verrez bien. Pas un mot à Sa Grâce, donc, puisqu’il ne le sait pas déjà. C’est une chance que le docteur soit parti avant votre arrivée ; il n’aurait jamais su garder le secret. Elle voudra le dire à sa propre façon à son époux, si elle se réveille un jour. ”

He stayed kneeling, silent, until he was sure they could not suspect him of reacting to their words. He stood. He looked again at his wife’s still form: she seemed a fragile vessel to ever have carried a child, and even more fragile to have lost it. “I may be smaller than you, but I’m no wilting flower,” he could imagine her saying, “I’ve suffered worse hardship than Your Grace, at any rate. And I’ll continue to suffer hardship, it seems: what are you doing here, when I made it clear I don’t want to see your ill-favored face ever again?”

It would almost have been gratifying to hear harsh words, if it meant that he heard her speak. But she said nothing, and he left the room in a greater muddle of feelings than he had entered it.


	21. Chapter 21

It would have been perfectly possible for Lord Alderaan to avoid his wife indefinitely, even in the few remaining rooms of Duke’s Alderaan: he might have removed himself to a guest bedroom, or slept in his library, in order to prevent their ever meeting in their shared sitting-room. Or he might have chosen to go visit a friend, since Rey was clearly in more capable hands than his; no one could have blamed him for it. A husband must pay some attention to his wife, of course, particularly at the onset of an extended illness, but to expect him to dance attention on her for months or weeks after the fact…!

In fact Rey believed he _had_ absented himself in the first days she was awake, when she could not go more than a few steps, and her ambit stretched only as far as the sitting-room settee. It was only when Jyn gave her permission to try the stairs, and perhaps take a very slow and calm turn in the garden, that she realized he had remained.

In truth Rey had been kept confined too long: she was perfectly well able to maneuver her way down even the steepest staircase, and she rejoiced to feel even the sharp autumn wind on her face. The garden was becoming very ugly, with the colder weather, but she did not care in the least. Seeing Mrs Dodd bustling between the outbuildings she hailed the housekeeper, and demanded a full account of the household; and she would have had it too, if her husband had not just then come round the corner on Fighter.

He seemed monumentally tall and forbidding, dressed in his habitual blacks and seated on his tall black horse: Rey, in her faded callico dress and plain shawl, felt like an insignificant little drab before the magnificence of the lord of the manor. Then she checked herself: what a thing to think of her own husband! And a man whom she ought to meet, now, with the utmost coolness, whatever romance they may have had having come to an end.

Therefore she did not greet him, though Mrs Dodd stared to see it: their eyes caught, and she looked down, supposing that he would not press the issue. She did not like to admit it even to herself, but her conscience caught more than a little at the sight of the red weal that split his face. His looks had always compelled Rey, though he was hardly a picture-book’s vision of a prince. She had thought him handsome in a way rather out of the common. All that was ended. There was no denying it: the scar she had given him was ugly, and would be ugly for ever.

That was her fault, and though some part of her thought he deserved it, another part did not think anyone deserved to be mutilated so. She felt color rise in her cheeks, though she could not say whether it was righteous indignation at the sight of a villain, or shame at having caused her husband such disfigurement. She was grateful when he rode on without a word.

If Rey believed that he would remain entirely out of her way, however, she was mistaken. The next morning, when Jyn came up to her room with the breakfast-tray, she learned that he had determined that they would dine together.

“Oh, I can not,” she said. “I am much too ill—”

Jyn stared at her. “You are not,” she said, “pray don’t tell me that you’ve turned into one of those awful women who refines for ever on their ailments. Your arm requires no bandaging any more; yesterday you were taxing Mrs Dodd over the state of the stillroom; you cannot tell me you do not wish to ask me about the canal, for I know you do, and have only been restraining yourself because you feel it must have been impossible for me to both attend a sickbed _and_ get any real work done. Therefore you are surely well enough to sit at table for the span of an hour.”

Rey sighed. “Not ill, then, but… Jyn, you cannot know how odious he made himself.”

“Well, I can,” she said, “for he’s told me.”

This stopped Rey short. “You _speak_ with him?”

“How could I not, between your health and our schemes for the improvement of Duke’s Alderaan? I won’t say he _approves_ of me; that would be a bridge too far. But speak with me, yes, and work with me, yes; and he has no one else to talk to, you know. He says he has written to some matrons of his acquaintance, and invited them to stay and help you, so that I may return to my canal; but of course it takes some time.”

“Some matrons—Lord, I hope it is not Mrs Phasma!”

“I don’t believe so. You shall have to ask him yourself, however.”

* * *

 Who had ordered dinner? Mrs. Dodd, Rey supposed; she had no part in it. It was not a _feast_ , but dishes precisely calibrated to tempt an invalid and yet not revolt a healthy person, all served as one course; she could not have chosen better herself.

Her husband sat grave and silent across the table from her, eating his meal; she could think of nothing beyond the barest pleasantries to say, and so kept quiet herself, except to ask for more of one dish or another. The whip-weal was healing well; it did not look bloody, only livid, and if there had been stitches, they had been removed.

“You look better,” he ventured, finally, when it became clear that Rey had no intention of doing the pretty. “You were very pale when you were ill; now you have color in your cheeks again.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I suppose it is Miss Erso’s care.”

She intended this rather as a red flag waved in front of a bull, for she could not believe that he had had _such_ a change of opinions as to truly greet Jyn with complaisance. He did not rise to the bait. “Yes,” he said. “She has nursed you most devotedly. I believe I have, in the past, been unfair to Miss Erso.”

Rey’s eyes snapped up to search her husband’s face. There did not seem to be any thing mocking there. “Have you?”

“Very.” He set his utensils down and looked at her gravely. “She may be excluded from society because of her past frailties; but I had no reason to assume the worst of her as she is today.”

This was not quite the rousing endorsement that Rey might have wished, but it was so far from Kylo’s previous position that it took her breath away. “Indeed,” Rey said, “she is the best of women.”

“Certainly her care for you is touching,” he agreed. “I suppose that the instinct of motherhood never really leaves a woman.”

“I suppose not,” Rey said, and returned her attention to her food: motherhood was not a topic she wished to discuss with her husband, not when he remained blissfully ignorant of the extent of her folly. What would he say, if he knew she had lost an heir to Alderaan in her headstrong flight? —She ought not care what he would say; he had driven her to it, and well he ought to know it. If any one was to blame for her miscarriage, it was he, not she, surely!

But then, she knew very well that her husband was prone to rages: who was to say that he truly held any of the beliefs he professed when he was lost in anger? Should she not have been patient with him, ready to forgive? An hour’s reflection might have led him to quite different conclusions than he held when she stormed away: perhaps he would have accompanied her home, and she would never have lost the child.

She would have dismissed these thoughts as idle phantasies, but for Kylo’s next words. “I have reflected very carefully on what you said to me,” he announced. “You were not—unjust.”

He was clearly anxious, now: she could tell from the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head. “I was not unjust, Your Grace?”

“Stop with ‘Your Grace’!” he snapped, then recalled himself. “No—you were not unjust. You taxed me with Miss Paige Tico’s plight, and told me that I was a hypocrite for befriending Lord Hux. So I was.”

If his embrace of Jyn Erso had taken her breath away, _this_ reversal left Rey speechless.

Kylo continued: “Armitage Hux is my oldest friend; I will not cut him for any reason. The damage to Miss Tico—both Miss Ticos—is done. But it was very wrong; I will see what can be done to learn of Miss Paige Tico’s fate, and I will do my best, with your permission, to bring Miss Rose into fashion next Season.”

It was not lost on Rey that this promise was very close to Lady Snoke’s attitude towards the situation, when she paid the Ticos ‘blood-money’ in the form of vouchers to Almack’s. She knew, too, that Rose was unlikely to have another Season: her parents could not afford it. Yet she could not reject such conciliatory behavior out-of-hand, and she knew that if her husband put his mind to it—why, he might be able to arrange any thing. “If Rose comes to Town, I am sure she will appreciate your patronage,” Rey said slowly. “I suppose it is proper in you to stand by Lord Hux at least a little; but I wish that he and I will never meet, and particularly not he and Rose.”

“Of course,” Kylo said, more quickly than Rey expected. “I am glad—that is to say, I did not believe you were of a forgiving temper.”

“If you can forgive me for—for whipping you,” she said, though she stumbled over the words, “I can forgive you for standing by your friend, however odious he may be. I suppose you would stand by him if he were a traitor to King and Country; and that is an attitude which I cannot condemn, foreign as it is to me. Loyalty is a virtue.”

This re-interpretation of Kylo’s behavior did not reflect perfectly what was in Rey’s mind: in truth she had never been the sort of person who says “my man, right or wrong,” and never thought she could be friendly with those who did. Luke had taught her too much of his unbending ethics for her to feel free and easy in that respect.

Still—at her wedding-breakfast, Countess Holdo had told her “the soul of a marriage is compromise, my girl. Mind you don’t compromise too much, for if you give him an inch he’ll take a mile; but don’t compromise too little, either, else you’ll be as unhappy as Leia.” They had both said and done things that ought, in her ordinary way of thinking, to be unforgivable: perhaps this was the time to practice forgiveness.

“I am very grateful to hear you say so,” Kylo said, and almost smiled, and Rey could not help but feel glad.

Then she felt sorry again, for the smile reminded her of what might-have-been, the child they had made. She knew she must tell him: he would be terribly, terribly angry to be kept in the dark, and rightly so, for an heir concerned him nearly as much as it did Rey herself. But she could not bring herself to do it quite yet. She did not know what he would do: it was very likely that he would blame her for the miscarriage, and he would be right. Then the tentative peace between them would be at an end.

“You must be wishing for company,” Kylo said. “You are not well enough to take up the duties of the estate; so the days must be very long. While you were ill I took the liberty of writing to some matrons of my acquaintance; we are to expect a visitor soon, but a very comfortable one, who will help you get well.”

“Oh!” Rey said, startled. “Jyn told me—it is very good of you, for I am sure I must be a dead bore to her, when she would rather be working on the canal scheme.”

“My thoughts precisely. She will be released from those duties soon: I have had a letter from Lady Snoke this morning, and she will arrive by tomorrow evening.”

“Oh! Lady Snoke—” Rey began, then stopped, then began again, carefully this time. “I hope you are not terribly far in her debt, my lord,” she said. “I do not mean the money—”

“Yes you do,” he said, “but that is hardly the point. She has been like a mother to me, Rey, when mine was not. Or have you heard from Lady Leia by some private means?”

Peevish Kylo’s response might have been, but it was just. Rey had received letters from Rose, from Poe and from Finn: Jyn had written to them, and to Admiral Ackbar and Lady Leia and Kaydel Ko Connix besides, to tell them of Rey’s accident and explain why they might have to wait for responses to any letters they sent in the future. Rey knew Kaydel to be a slow correspondent, and the Admiral was apt to forget all sorts of things, the task of responding to a letter being the least of them; but why Lady Leia had not responded she did not know.

Or, rather, she did know. “No, I have not. She is very taken up with her writing just now, I imagine,” she admitted.

“My mother is always taken up with her writing,” Kylo said, and did not bother to hide the bitterness in his voice. “That puts me in mind of something—did she tell you anything of the old church, where you sheltered from the storm?”

“No,” Rey responded, confused, “what has that to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” Kylo said. “Pay it no mind.—I hope you will find Lady Snoke a more comfortable companion than you fear. I know she has the reputation of a Tartar, but recall that she was the one who granted you permission to waltz at Almack’s—and she was one of the greatest proponents of our marriage.”

This was a great deal for Rey to swallow; she had never liked Lady Snoke, not from the first time she set eyes on the matron’s emaciated frame, and she knew well that the lady had taken part in Paige Tico’s ostracism. But then, she told herself, so did every one; Countess Holdo was one of the patronesses of Almack’s, and she was therefore part of the shunning as well; Lady Leia herself had not troubled to tell Rey the truth about her friend Rose’s family. ‘Blood-money’ or not, Lady Snoke might well have denied Rose vouchers; and she might also have declared that both Rey and Lady Carise Sindian were shameless hussies who deserved ruination, after the contretemps in the library.

As for Lady Snoke’s treatment of Rose and Finn, Rey had to admit that they were not a brilliant match; perhaps it was out of even Lady Snoke’s power to bring such an ill-assorted marriage about and yet maintain Rose’s position in society. If Rose had been about to run off with an acknowledged rake, a man Rey knew to be of bad character—would Rey have done any differently?

Rey did not like to think herself such a meddler. She was a very truthful girl, however. She might very well have taken such drastic measures, or worse.

“I will do my best to recall all the kindnesses Lady Snoke has done you,” Rey said, “and to see her with fresh eyes. After all, I am not a green girl entering Almack’s for the first time—it is very likely my opinion of her shall change.”

This was the best Rey could do; it seemed to be enough, for Kylo did smile then, and even with the ugly scar it transformed his face into such a handsome sight that she could not regret any thing. She was not at all easy in her spirit, for she was not convinced that Lady Snoke could be much different than Mrs. Phasma, but she was willing, at least, to _try_.

* * *

Rey found that she perhaps had run on beyond her strength: when she went back to her room, she fell asleep directly. It was quite dark when she awoke, and she had to summon Bebe for a candle. She was startled to realize how quickly the days were getting shorter: it seemed that in the fortnight she had ailed, the autumn had come on in earnest.

After such a lengthy nap she could not imagine going to sleep again right away. She bespoke supper in her room and instead set herself to reading and responding to her correspondence.

Rose had written a note that started full of anxiety, became full of mirth, and circled round to be full of anxiety again: she feared that Rey’s injuries were very much worse than she had been led to believe, and hoped only that she would receive a response from Rey’s own dear hand before long, and nothing worse. Rey was in her prayers; she found that she was praying an excessive lot lately, there being not much to do at her father’s estate, unless she were to agree to marry one of the various country squires that had presented themselves to her.

She had managed to avoid this fate thus far, mainly by playing them off against each other, and letting each of them think themselves the favorite in turn; but they were so good, and so tiresome, that she thought she must pick one before the winter was out. Her descriptions of each of her suitors followed, and finally there Rey saw the Rose who had so enlivened her London Season. The worthy young man whom her parents most favored, and who paid her the very most particular attentions, was the primary subject of her ridicule, but in a very few sentences she had sketched such a portrait of the young men of her district that Rey supposed they must be the biggest crop of numpties ever seen.

“Of course,” Rose wrote, “Lieutenant Dameron and Captain Storm are here as well, although I am not allowed to mix with them. The other girls can speak of no one else, for they quite put the rest of the gentlemen in the shade. I cannot think what they are doing here. I wrote you once that my Season was preserved in memory, but that cannot be true as long as they hang about: I wish it was only memory, for I cannot get it back.”

This nearly rounded out the correspondence, and set Rey scrabbling amongst her papers for Finn’s letter, to provide her with his point-of-view.

“Rose is too much of a good girl,” he began, without preamble, and this set the prevailing tone. He was more in love with her than ever, heard stories of her sweetness and goodness from every one in the district; but he was exasperated with her unwillingness to put even so much as a toe out of line, to accept a dropped love-letter, or to stand up to dance when her parents were not present.

Rey sighed. She could well imagine Finn’s impatience: he had always lived in the city. He did not understand, she felt sure, the way country gossip went around: the further apart people lived, the more passionate they were for news. The county surely already knew of Rose’s censure, and why Finn had come to stay; were she to stand up with him even once, the news would be on every body’s lips, and the priest would come round asking when the banns were to be read.

Poe had pointed this out to Finn, it seemed, for once behaving as the more sensible friend; “and I could not do without his friendship,” Finn wrote, “for otherwise I would be more blue-devilled than you have ever seen me.” She found this hard to believe, remembering the Christmas they had spent together on the streets; but then, she supposed, love could make people feel the most peculiar ways.

In any case, he ended the letter saying that he knew he was an ass for not wishing her better health, but he could not believe she was very ill: one thing he had discovered about the Quality, was that they loved nothing better than to pretend to be on their deathbed, and to have blood let and leeches set and to drink a patent medicine and take the waters, when they had nothing wrong with them at all. He would persist in believing this was the case with her, for he could not bear to imagine her in poor health, and he considered that to a girl who had risen as far as she, a trifling thing like a fall from a horse must be as nothing.

If his aim was to make Rey laugh, and feel grateful to her oldest friend, he succeeded; she turned to her third letter with a light heart.

Poe’s letter was a curious article. He had not troubled to cross his pages, and it ran very long. Rey could only suppose that he thought she was so rich she did not care how much she paid the post-man. It was strange to get such a lengthy missive from him, however: he had never written her much before, and she had not thought writing long letters to be part of his character.

He opened by saying that he hoped his letter found her well, and that he hoped that should it find her very ill, someone would burn it: for he did not hold with those who kept their relations’ letters, and if the worst happened and a relation was reading it, he hoped they took his opinion to heart. “And if it is my Lord of Alderaan reading this,” he added, “please know that I am sure you are to blame for all that has befallen Rey, and that I will meet you where you choose, when you choose.”

She hardly knew what to think of this gallantry, and did not know whether it was in earnest or not, and so she read on. He launched into a minute explanation of his doings over the past several weeks, the estates where he and Finn had shot pheasants, the dinner-parties they had gone to, and the circumstance of Finn meeting his father (“The old man loved him—you will hardly be surprised—told me after ‘I thought you were bringing me a Cit, boy, and instead you bring me an Englishman,’ which is the highest praise he can give someone who cannot trace their family to one of William the Conqueror’s knights”). This was all very well, if somewhat meandering; but he finally came to the point (as much as he could) in saying, “I do not know if it is possible for Finn’s suit to prosper—damme —I cannot think why I brought him here—all I want is him happy and yet I know whether he is married or deployed or both he will be sent far away from me, or I from him—and the worst of it is that I have quite grown to see _why_ he loves La Tico, and even sometimes wish—but this is all idle fancy and I am a bounder.”

Rey had to reread this in order to make sure she understood it; but when she did, she felt quite tired. Poe in love with Rose! Or was he passionately devoted to Finn? And did Finn realize any of the storms raging in his friend’s heart? Rey knew him for a sensitive man, and could only suppose that he had some idea, but obviously not enough of one to confide it to Rey.

And what possible solution could there be? If Kylo had spoken truly, and meant to bring Rose into fashion—always assuming that she found some way to come to London for the season, and found a way to underwrite her toilette—he might make it possible for Poe to propose marriage to her; Poe had no money, but he was of very good blood, and that had to count for something. Still, Mrs. Tico would be likely to hold out for a brilliant match; not to mention that in that case Poe would be cutting Finn out, and very likely that would be an end to all felicity between them…

It was a Gordian knot, and Rey had no idea how to go about untangling it. She sat up thinking about her responses to their letters, rereading them by the light of her candle, for a long time; then she called for her lap-desk and began to compose responses. She assured Finn that he was not wrong, and that she had never been badly hurt; she told Poe that she was grateful for his confidences, and she was on the mend. And she asked Rose to come stay with her in London for the season: “After all, I am a matron now, and very well able to serve as your chaperone; and I am a woman of fashion, and a Duchess to boot, you know!”

This, she supposed, would appeal to Mrs. Tico, if nothing else would; and when she sanded the paper and sealed the final seal, she felt as though she had done the best she could by her friends, and they would have to work the rest out themselves.

Engaged in this work, she did not think about what her husband was doing until she began to consider blowing out her candle and going to sleep. When she considered it, she realized she had half-expected him to come to her that evening. He could not think her very invalidish. If he _had_ come, would she have turned him away? Bebe had told her, very delicately, that the doctor had said the miscarriage had done her no harm, and that she might resume ‘conjugal relations’ as soon as may be, to try for another. Could she have stomached it? Would she have finally plucked up the courage to tell him the truth?

It was all a theoretical question; and this, she found, bothered her a great deal.


	22. Chapter 22

When Lady Snoke arrived, Rey managed to be upright and relatively well-dressed: perhaps she was not looking her finest, but the lady had been asked to attend a sickbed, not to attend a party.

Rey half-expected the carriage to disgorge the sneering, staring matron she remembered from Almack’s, swathed in regal cloth-of-gold and topped with curling ostrich feathers, attended by very superior servants. This creature would have been a trial indeed to host, and Rey had already devised several schemes for unobtrusively fobbing her guest off on her husband, should it prove to be so.

The Lady Snoke who alit on the steps of Duke’s Alderaan, however, bore little resemblance to this Gorgon. She was too sensible of the norms of the country to wear cloth-of-gold; her yellow gown was silk, and in a fashionable robelike Chinoiserie style, but very understated for all of that. She had eschewed ostrich feathers for a plain chip bonnet, and her dresser was not a fancified creature at all but (Bebe informed Rey later) a very good sort of girl originally from Norfolk, and not at all interested in the French way of doing things, which might be considered a virtue or a black mark.

It was not long before Rey began to see how carefully Lady Snoke must have managed her husband. This was because she felt herself beginning to be managed too. At first it was pleasant: Lady Snoke insisted on no ceremony whatsoever, merely wishing to go upstairs and bestow her things where they belonged to be, and to see Kylo for supper in the library, and to perhaps come put her head into Her Grace’s sickroom—but only for a very little moment. These wishes superseded the tea Rey had planned to give their honored guest, but she could not deny that they were very sensible: Rey did not in the least wish to play hostess just at that instant, having had a brief recurrence of her fever that morning. She took herself off to bed with some relief.

The next day, Rey woke up refreshed, and credited this to Lady Snoke’s kindness in not requiring much of her hostess. She sent Bebe to invite the good matron to take breakfast with her in her sitting-room. Ensconced on its sofa-bed, wrapped in a dressing-gown and thoroughly warmed by a roaring fire, Rey had felt that she was quite ready to resume her duties as the mistress of the house; she had called for the latest account-book and began to examine the entries since she had left for Melton Mowbray.

Lady Snoke, coming in to find Rey engaged in this task, was horrified. “None of this nonsense!” she declared. “Do you wish to worry yourself into a relapse?”

Rey did not, of course.

“You must do as you chuse,” Lady Snoke said, holding her hands up as though to disclaim all responsibility. “Of course you know your self best—but believe a woman old enough to be your mother: you cannot go too slowly. Were you not feverish only yesterday?”

Rey had to admit she was; and the wound on her arm, which they had thought nearly healed, had wept more than it ought.

“Yet you did not call for the doctor— _well._ I do not like them above half myself; but you might consider that it is better to be cupped than it is to be ill!”

Rey could not argue with this sensible statement, and put down the estate-book; by noon the doctor had been summoned, and she had been relieved of quite a pint of blood. She never felt very well, after such treatment, and her illness was amplified by the fact that Lady Snoke would not leave her side: she had no chance to beg the doctor not to reveal the circumstances of her illness to her husband, and (she thought) little hope of convincing him to keep her secret even if she had broken with him.

By great good luck, however, he did not mention it: he confined himself to observation of the wound at hand, and pronounced it “suppurating—a laudable pus—fear not.” Kylo expressed great relief at the news; and Rey finally understood that her husband truly was concerned, and truly had kept himself away for fear of offending.

Perhaps that was why he kept himself from her bed as well? She could not imagine any other reason. There was one bad moment when, inquiring after who had nursed her in the earliest days of her illness, Lady Snoke discovered that Jyn Erso was Rey’s friend; she had been unable to keep the shock and horror from her face. “My dear!” she had exclaimed, “do you not know—?”

“I do know,” Rey said, struggling to keep her tone pleasant, “and I do not care; nor, I think, does my husband. Miss Erso’s past is in the past.”

“A very Christian sentiment to hold,” Lady Snoke replied, “but surely you do not think a loose woman ever entirely mends her ways? I would be afraid to have her casting her lures under my roof, where my husband sleeps!”

Rey could not help herself; where a moment before she had been angry, now she was purely amused. “You cannot possibly think _Jyn_ should have a tendre for _Kylo_!” she laughed. “Lord—she’s as old as his mother!”

“Age does not dim some women’s animal spirits,” Lady Snoke said, somewhat on her dignity. “I apologize; I spoke too freely. I have not known Miss Erso these thirty years or more.”

To capitulate so quickly and completely, Rey thought, was very civil in Lady Snoke: perhaps she thought the worst of every one, but Rey could not accuse her of stubbornness, at least. The matter was never mentioned again, and though Rey continued to wonder why her husband did not come to her at night (and even began to consider the possibility of brazenly going to _his_ rooms) she did not find the possibility of his unfaithfulness with Jyn any more likely. In any case, Jyn had absented herself from Duke’s Alderaan, purportedly to tend her father, and actually (Rey thought) to avoid an unpleasant meeting with Lady Snoke.

* * *

Without Jyn nearby, Rey spent a great deal of time in Lady Snoke’s company, and yet after two weeks had passed she was no closer to deciding what she truly thought of the matron. 

Lady Snoke was not precisely _pleasant_ company. Something about her made Rey always feel like a naughty little child. Rey was not the only one, either: she found Anandra feverishly polishing silver one day, because Lady Snoke had pointed out the tiniest water-spot on the cutlery that morning. “She didn’t shout, Your Grace,” Anandra said (for she seemed so overwrought that Rey imagined her to have been positively abused), “but she looked at me like you would look at a dog that had made a mess in your bed, Your Grace, and I—of course I was in the wrong.”

Anandra was telling the truth: Lady Snoke never did shout. In this she was quite unlike Lady Leia, whom Rey had known simply to sit at her desk and call at the top of her lungs for a servant to assist her. Rey could not deny that she preferred the less boisterous approach; but then, Lady Leia was always so good-humored that it was hard to hold it against her. Lady Snoke, on the other hand, was frequently and icily angry. Nothing slipped past her keen and level gaze; no meal was too commonplace to be judged (and sometimes judged wanting); no mantel went without a fingertip run along it, checking for dust.

And yet somehow Rey did not resent Lady Snoke’s opinions, or her meddling. Perhaps it was because she was so very tired, and still so very slow, and could not herself check to make sure that all was done as it ought to be; or perhaps it was some deep-seated longing for a mother’s kindly scolding. Within a very few days she had become used to the idea that Lady Snoke would be present at her every meeting with Mrs. Dodd, and that she would contribute as much as Rey did. It was a comfort to know that if (for example) she forgot to order dinner, Mrs. Dodd would clear her throat, and Lady Snoke would already have a proposal that she need only say yea or nay to.

This was not to say that Lady Snoke had her own way in every thing, and full run of Duke’s Alderaan to do as she might wish. She did not. But it was not Rey who checked her: it was Kylo. One evening they sat to dine; Rey had been feeling very much better, and had even exerted herself to go for a very short ride. Force was absolutely recovered, and fortunately did not seem much the worse for wear for her trial—and therefore all felt reasonably satisfied with the day’s events.

“As our Rey is better,” Lady Snoke proposed, at the first remove, “I believe it would do every one some good to have some livelier company. I understand that, with the close of the hunting season, Lord Hux will be traveling back to London; his path will bring him quite near Duke’s Alderaan…?”

“My dear Lady Snoke,” Kylo said, in a tone that brooked no argument, “I shall not be inviting Lord Hux to stay—nor Mrs. Phasma neither. If my wife pines for her friends, she may invite _her_ friends, not mine; I don’t care to have ‘em here.”

Rey was amazed at the ferocious blankness that overtook Lady Snoke’s face, receiving that blunt negatory; she had not imagined anything could upset the dowager enough to register any sort of discomfiture. The moment passed; but she was very grateful to Kylo, and pleased that he had managed to close off that topic of conversation for ever without revealing more than she wished.

For Kylo’s part, on the other hand—he was livid. He managed to finish the meal in a gentlemanly fashion, but it was a struggle to prevent his anger from bubbling over. Rey did not see it, he was careful; but Lady Snoke did, and worse, she did not care.

After his Rey went to sleep he paced the library, where he knew his patroness would seek him out before long. He could not understand why she had behaved so shabbily. Indeed, he had thought that she was getting along very well with Rey, that Lady Snoke was acting almost like a mother to his poor motherless wife: now this.

“You wish to murder me, I suppose,” Snoke said, as she swanned into the room.

“I wish—Damme, of course I do,” Kylo said. “I do not share my confidences lightly—”

“But you have always, always shared them with me,” Snoke replied, coaxingly. “My dear boy, you have absolutely no conception of the favor I am doing you.”

“What favor?”

“Your wife is neither strong enough, nor weak enough,” she said, crossing to his favorite armchair. She seated herself as though it were a throne, and without asking poured herself a brandy. “Either you must make of her a player, or you must break her to flinders; I don’t care which, but I would try to mold her, if I could.”

“By bringing Hux’s set here?”

“Hux’s set! It used to be ‘Ren’s set,’ do you realize?”

“Not any more,” he said. “Rather—they are still my friends; but I have a family to think of as well.”

“What _family_?” Kylo had many times noticed the reptilian aspect of Lady Snoke’s gaze—something about how wide-set her eyes were, and how sallow her skin—but he had never been repulsed by it, until now. He knew what her next words must be. “If it is your unborn heir you speak of, she killed it with her carelessness. Do you think you will have another? Perhaps she is incapable.”

He had not considered it. Lady Snoke always knew where to strike. He dodged. “You cannot deny that she has reason to hate them.”

“If by ‘them’ you mean Lord Hux, I can certainly deny it,” Lady Snoke declared. “What has he ever done to her? What has he ever done but lived his life as best he might, within the strictures of this world? A girl cannot be ruined if she is clever; she will always find a way to turn situations to her advantage.”

“As you did?”

Kylo thought this might be too much: he had no concept of how she would react to such blatant challenge. He had never, never challenged her in such a way: not when she was the only person who seemed to see his worth, and certainly not when she had begun to slyly pay off his bills, never speaking of it, yet always managing to communicate that they both understood him to be very much in her debt.

Lady Snoke had been forged in the fire, however. “Yes, as I did,” she said, pinning him with that famous ice-and-fire stare. “I dare say Lady Leia told you about that. She was still in the schoolroom, of course, and knows nothing of the true circumstances.”

“Not Lady Leia. Countess Holdo,” Kylo corrected her.

“On this sojourn to London?”

“No,” he said, with some satisfaction. “I have always known.”

It had not been long after his falling-out with his mother that he had been summoned to the Countess’s townhouse; he had, at the time, been young enough to go without question, and had found himself quite as much on review as any soldier. She had inquired as to why he had treated his mother so ill, and his father too; had remonstrated with him as though she had any right to do so; and finally—with some relish—laid out Lady Snoke’s checkered past.

Lady Snoke had been a mere miss, neither a Lady nor an Honorable; she had been some country squire’s daughter, and thought very much an ugly little thing. But she had a way of discovering gossip, and using it to her advantage. When she was caught returning from a turn in the garden with Lord Snoke, her dress all over grass-stains, no one had thought he would think it his duty to marry her; but he had.

She had threatened to reveal Lord Snoke’s liaison with another man’s wife, Holdo said, which would not have been such a great offense, except that Lord Snoke was certainly the father of all five of the woman’s children; and the oldest of them was set to inherit an earldom. Then, too, she had carefully gathered evidence against every person who might urge Lord Snoke to discard her, and prepared them long before she had ever allowed her soon-to-be husband to lead her into a darkened bower.

“What of it?” young Ben had said.

“Her ideas,” Countess Holdo began, then stopped and continued again. “Some think me a too-strict moralist; I could never endorse some of your mother’s highest kicks, for example. Some think Lady Snoke a moralist too: she is not. She is only an opportunist. She believes this world to be nothing more than a collection of prizes to be won, and she believes there to be no rules too sacred to be broken. In order to ensure that she always maintains the advantage, she seems to endorse a strict code of conduct: but I assure you, there is nothing in her that values it.”

“How do you know my ideas don’t march with hers?” he asked, defiantly.

Had he been a very few years older, Ben might have been capable of recognizing his own inconsistencies, that he had rung a peal over his mother for being a libertine yet now was defending the honor of a woman who (by all reports) had the most mercenary outlook on life. He was not capable. All he could think was that the Countess was part of his mother’s set, or anyway one of his mother’s friends, and that he wanted nothing to do with her or them or any of their opinions; if they disliked Lady Snoke, then by God he would like her.

He had never repeated Holdo’s words to any one; he had thought of them, briefly, whenever Lady Snoke was at her most ruthless. She would think that he had been patient, saving his ammunition, biding his time for the moment to strike at his patroness; in truth, he knew, he had merely been snowed.

“Very good,” she said, at last. “I always thought you too hot-blooded. Perhaps you are not so irrational as I had feared.”

A grim thought entered Kylo’s mind. “I must have a promise of you,” he said.

“What promise, pray?” She had drunk most of her brandy; she examined it, in the candle-light, as though it were a jewel.

“You must promise that you will not tell Rey that I know of the child.”

A slow smile spread across Lady Snoke’s face. “Why, of course, darling boy,” she said. “And you will make me a promise: you will continue to let me prattle to you about laws, when Parliament comes back from recess.”

This was a subtle enough sally that any one listening in might not have realized what Lady Snoke meant. When she ‘prattled’ she expected him to listen, and to take on her opinions as his own; sometimes she might even carelessly leave a draft of a speech, ‘my phantasy, you know, if I had been born a man,’ upon his desk. Then he knew his duty, and would deliver it: he had spoken eloquently in favor of the Corn Laws in the last session. They had been her particular concern; he had almost thought that once they had passed she would cease her instruction. A false hope, he saw now.

“I shall always let you speak to me on any topic,” Kylo said, not quite promising his fealty in return: he no longer was certain he could make such a vow. A faint moue of displeasure flickered across her face, before she controlled it: would she consider herself bound by her own promise, when he failed to reciprocate, he wondered? But she _had_ sworn. She had never broken her word to him before, and he had no reason to suppose that she would now.

Still he went to bed displeased, and unsure of precisely why. Lady Snoke’s views had always marched with his own (though he might not have been quite as strident without her urging). He agreed with Lady Snoke that Rey was too soft; her flight from Hux’s hunting box had proven that if nothing else would. Yet somehow he could not endorse her attitude towards his wife, and that troubled him deeply.

* * *

Relieved of all duties related to the running of Duke’s Alderaan, yet beginning to recover her strength, Rey found herself at loose ends. There was always needlework, of course, and the reading of novels—but these Lady Snoke disapproved of, and soon she put them away. She had never learned to paint, or to play the pianoforte; so she often found herself staring out the window, watching Mordred gambol at her husband’s feet as he walked the estate, or observing as Mrs Dodd and Anandra scurried between the outbuildings and the main house.

On one such occasion, rain was threatening, and Rey had the head-ache; she had always been susceptible to that ailment, when clouds rolled in. At Ahch-To Hall it had been a trial to her. Lady Snoke, unaware of this, watched her with every appearance of concern as she massaged her temples and rang for a cup of tea. “My dear Rey,” she finally said, pinching her thin lips together, “are you quite well? Forgive me — does your belly pain you?”

Rey lifted her head rather more quickly than was advisable. Her belly did not pain her, as a matter of fact, but that Lady Snoke would suggest it…. She met the older woman’s eyes, and saw the knowledge in them. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“You certainly do,” Lady Snoke replied, a smile playing at her lips. “A lady knows, my dear, when another is in such a situation. I have struggled with how to broach the subject.”

Rey closed her eyes. It was not so much that she did not want Lady Snoke looking at her with that pitying, concerned smile; it was that she did not want to discuss what had happened with any one, and she knew full well that the lady’s first thoughts would be of her husband’s feelings, not her own. “I did not wish you to,” she said, as quellingly as she could. “I will be forthright: I have not told my husband, and I wish you will not either.”

Snoke put a hand to her chest. “I? Oh, you may depend upon it, I shall be as silent as the grave. Men do not understand these things! No one can—until they have carried a child beneath their heart.”

Rey was greatly struck with that turn of phrase. It was exactly how she felt, though she had not felt that way until after the child was lost to her forever. “I did not know you were a mother,” she said.

“Twice; but they were still-born, and the doctors forbade another attempt. My husband’s heir was his nephew; a sad rip, and I am grateful every day that my marriage-portion was well protected from him.”

“I am so sorry,” was all Rey could say.

“Never mind it, girl; it was a great pity, but that is our lot. And sometimes these things happen for a reason; I was not made to be a mother. Perhaps neither were you.” This made Rey blink. “Oh! You think me a rude old hag. Well, think what you like. Mark me, though: you never had a mother yourself, did you?”

Rey had to admit she had not.

“Then you have no role models; and Lady Leia is not a very good one, is she?”

Rey had to admit she was not.

Rey did not like this turn of the conversation at all; what had been a head-ache was turning into a deep uneasiness. The trouble was that Lady Snoke was saying nothing that had not occurred to her, in the bitter watches of the night. It was not only that she had no parents to emulate; it was also that she was not, no matter how she might pretend, truly a member of her husband’s class, and she had no confidence that she could raise a future Duke. She had none of the natural authority Lady Snoke carried with her; she had made friends of some of the servants, and yet she knew that Kylo’s relationship with them was far deeper, though far more distant.

“Of course there is no reason why you will not try again,” Lady Snoke said. “Kylo has no heir closer than a fourth cousin; it shall be your duty. I will help you learn your role.”

This speech nearly took Rey’s breath away. If someone younger than Lady Snoke had uttered it, she would have classified it as ‘impertinence.’ As it was, she hardly knew what how to respond. “Do not use my husband’s given name”? She knew perfectly well that Lady Snoke had been almost a mother to him since he was at Eton. “Keep your nose out of our business”? But Kylo had invited Lady Snoke to come in order to have her in their business, so that she could support Rey. Perhaps this was what he had intended. She did not like it, but it was not her place to disagree…

“Oh! I have overset you,” Lady Snoke was saying, with poisonous sweetness. “Don’t worry; I recall that it was very upsetting to think of being in a family way again after I had lost my first. But my dear, if it is still too much for you after you give birth, you must know I would be more than pleased to help—to absolutely play nurse to your dear child. I will almost think of them as my grandson or granddaughter. I cannot express to you how pleased I would be.”

She had reached out to touch Rey’s hand; it was all Rey could do not to flinch away. “Thank you, Lady Snoke,” she said. “You know, it is very strange— I think my head will ache a little less if I might take a turn around the house. I have been lying on this divan all morning. —No, don’t get up! I won’t need a bit of your help. I’ll be back before very long.”

Lady Snoke let her go; but as Rey slipped out the door, Mordred at her heels, she caught a glance of the older woman’s face. The expression was very unpleasant.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm running a bit behind in my writing, so this week's chapter hasn't been beta-read. It's therefore likely I'll go back and make changes—and, also, don't hold any errors against my beta team!

Escaping from her sitting-room, Rey felt as though she were engaged a long retreat, or as though she were folding up into herself, into a smaller and smaller and smaller space. Now the sitting-room had been taken: Lady Snoke had occupied it, and she could never be gainsaid. “I will help you learn your role,” she had declared. “I would be pleased to play nurse,” she had announced. She had made Rey’s hackles stand up just exactly as Mordred’s did, when he encountered someone he did not like.

And yet, when Rey parroted Lady Snoke’s words back to herself, she could not name exactly what had made them so objectionable. Surely she ought to be grateful? There was nothing in them but kindness, perhaps over-concern.

There _was_ something other than kindness. It was _not_ only Rey’s ill-humor and her head-ache.

Rey had said she would take a turn about the house, and at first she had only thought of the rooms they occupied; but now she knew she could not bear to return to Lady Snoke after only a few minutes. Well, she need not be a liar: there was plenty more of the house to walk in.

For all the attention Rey had paid to her husband’s land, and despite her hours closeted with Mrs. Dodd, Rey had spent hardly any time indoors. When first she had come to Duke’s Alderaan, she had assumed that the vast majority of the house lay in complete ruin. Eventually she had realized that some rooms had simply been shut up, for without money there was no way to bring them into habitable condition. It had seemed silly, when she first learned of them, to concern herself with them: she had no intention of inviting anyone to stay until she had convinced Kylo to rebuild the house, and with only two people and such a tiny complement of servants, there was no need for more space.

Now, however, she regarded the closed rooms as a lost kingdom to explore—a kingdom where Lady Snoke would not follow. When she set her key in the lock that led to the shut-up part of the house, and opened the door onto a cold and dusty parlor, she felt a frisson of excitement: who knew what she would find?

The truth was that she had a fairly good idea: some good old furniture beneath Holland covers, some broken furniture beneath no covers at all (the household had, she learned, been using some of the rooms as a dumping-ground for things too worn to be used but too good to be thrown out) and a great deal of emptiness. Mordred, following at her heels, sniffed out more than one nest of mice.

That was not to say that the rooms were ugly. They were not, even in their decay; she passed through rooms with parquet floors that still gleamed beneath their layer of grime, and the paper (however smoke-damaged it might be) that still hung on the walls was as sumptuous as it was out-dated. A careful climb up a shaky staircase took her to what she imagined might have been the servants’ quarters, and there she found a room whose walls were all painted with murals of a spring garden: a very young lady’s room, she thought, not a servant’s after all. Perhaps it had been Lady Leia’s? She could hear the rain on the roof, and could see where damp had got into the walls: the murals were still beautiful, but one of the walls was quickly becoming too damaged to be saved, even were they to rebuild and re-roof tomorrow.

Rey’s greatest discovery was quite unexpected. She had been traveling from room to room, each leading onto the next in the most old-fashioned way; she thought perhaps they had been subdivided from larger ones, but she couldn’t be sure. She had just gone through three quite barren chambers with broken windows and wet floors, had just wondered if she perhaps ought to the snugger parts of the house, when she opened a door and came upon a ballroom.

Or was it a ballroom? It was much larger than the rooms she had been passing through, but not big enough for more than a few couples to stand up in; yet she could not think of any other purpose to which it might be put. There was a musicians’ gallery at one end, fenced in with a gilded rail; a spiral staircase led up to it. The floor was that lovely golden parquet, though sooty footsteps had long ago been tracked through it—Rey thought she must be very close to the truly burnt part of the house. Sconces in the shape of human hands must once have held a plethora of candles: now the only light came from high windows, and though it was midday the room remained gloomy.

The most striking aspect of the room, however, was the mirrors, enormous mirrors in enormous gilt frames, installed in ranks across two parallel walls, six on a side.

When she entered she did not fully experience the effect, for the first mirrors had shattered utterly. Some tidy person had swept the shards into neat piles; nevertheless, Rey picked Mordred up, so that he would not cut his paws. A little further into the room, the mirrors were so crazed and cracked that Rey did not understand how they still clung to their frames. It was not until she had traversed the length of the room that she understood how it must have been.

The last mirrors, facing each other, were whole, and somehow the decay that had struck the rest of the house had passed them by. They were as clear as they must have been on they day they were hung. When Rey stepped between them, she saw herself stretching out into infinity; infinite Mordreds squirmed in her arms.

She was startled by what she saw. The girl in the mirrors looked well-rested; her cheeks were rosy—hardly invalidish. She stepped towards the nearer mirror, watching herself refracted back and forth between the glasses. Dust clung to the hem of her skirt, in the back where she could not normally see; she kicked it away with one foot. She set Mordred down; he wandered out of the frame. Then she stepped closer, closer.

Rey was not normally one to indulge in flights of fancy. She had read some treatises on the refraction of light; she knew the principles upon which a mirror operated. Nor had she ever been considered vain: she knew perfectly well that her form and features were good, and did not need to refine upon the matter.

She had never before, however, come upon a ruined ballroom in a manor that might have been a setting in one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. The romance of the room was too much for her. She watched as moving her arm made a line of Reys move their arms. She examined her face, and saw the other Reys move, examining their faces. Did she look like her mother, she wondered? For one vertiginous moment she imagined the Reys as her mother, and her grandmother, and all her female ancestors back to the beginning of time, standing behind her and holding her up. Whether they were ladies or whores, farmers’ wives or washerwomen, she knew she must bear their stamp.

And Lady Snoke had said she had no mother— _ha._ “Everyone has a mother,” Rey said aloud, and watched the other Reys repeating it. “Everyone has a mother,” she said again, “and Lady Snoke knows no more about mothering than I do.” Considering, she touched the mirror in front of her, examined where her reflection’s fingertips met her own. The glass was cold to the touch. “Even if I don’t have a mother,” she said to herself, “I have myself, and that is all I need.”

It was true. 

* * *

 

When Rey came to Kylo and informed him that it was time for Lady Snoke to go home, that she did not need any more “cosseting” (as she put it), he was not precisely surprised. Lady Snoke had all but told him she intended to make of Rey a player in the _haut ton_ ’s eternal politicking; and every apprentice in that field must some day outstrip and reject their master. Kylo knew it well: for all he was admired and feared, he had never managed to step out of Lady Snoke’s shadow.

Rey was not in shadow. She stood in the light of the library window, and the light limned her golden as she told him that she had dropped Lady Snoke quite a broad hint that morning: “and I hope I did not do wrong, but I could not do otherwise; nothing you say would change my resolve. I must have my house to myself again.”

Rey seemed like a sword new-forged, having been hammered and heated and now taken from the fire still glowing-hot. The yellow light reminded Kylo of Lady Snoke’s habitual garments, but Rey herself was all in white, just as he had seen her so many times in London. She might have learned from Snoke, but she had not been changed by her. Thank God, he thought, and then felt disloyal for thinking such a thing about his mentor.

“You did nothing wrong,” he assured her.

It was not until later that he realized what she had said: “I must have my house to myself again.” He found the words bubbling up to the surface of his mind again and again, as he met with Jyn to examine the most recent plans for the canal, as he read the newspapers’ reports of what was occurring on the Continent (and rather more personal letters from some of the diplomats involved, which gave more detail), as he rode Fighter across the frozen land.

To have Rey feel that Duke’s Alderaan was her house—that was a gift beyond any thing; it made him desperately happy. Yet his happiness was not unmixed.

Sometimes he wondered if he were merely trading Lady Snoke’s bridle and halter for his wife’s. He was as broken to saddle as any husband ever was. He did not even consider, any more, the possibility of coming to her at night, though he would be well within his rights to do so: he was too concerned that she might flee him again, to even worse effect. He had poured his effort into the canal project, had spent more time at Duke’s Alderaan together than he had in years: soon instead of Lady Snoke it would be Lady Leia to visit, he supposed, and then all his independence would be gone…

These thoughts never surfaced, lurked instead like dark things in at the bottom of the ocean; he was mostly untroubled by them, yet every once in a while he would sense them, like a great shadow in the deep. It would pass, and he would feel it go, and be glad that it did not breach.

He told Rey that he would ensure that Lady Snoke took her leave of them before too many days had passed, but when he raised the subject, he found her surprising meek. “So I have outstayed my welcome, have I?” she asked.

He bowed silently.

“Rey told me so; but I did not intend to go unless she could bring you to the point of backing her,” Snoke said. They were in the library again, and Snoke had poured herself brandy again; Rey was with Mr Albemarle, not caring now whether any one thought she would work herself into a relapse, discussing the different steam-engines that might be purchased for the canal. Kylo had never seen her so happy.

“I back her to the hilt, madam,” he said.

“Do you, despite her correspondence with Mr. Dameron? A trusting fellow, you are. —No, do not look at me like that. As long as you do not forget what you owe me, you should be loyal to her; it is as I would wish,” Snoke said, with that habitual swirl of brandy in her glass.

“Or else—”

“Have I ever been so vulgar as if to say _or else_? Or so cruel? Do parents say ‘you will be a good son, or else’? Not if they are good parents; good parents are esteemed for their own qualities, not for the punishments they mete out. And I am to be like a mother to you and to Rey. I believe we have made an excellent start.”

This fatuous statement was accompanied by a thin and familiar smile.

Kylo knew that smile. When he had been young, it had seemed kind.

“I am surprised that you say so,” he remarked, “since she has told you to go.”

“You do not know mothers and daughters,” Lady Snoke said in a tone that might have seemed placid had it emerged from any other mouth. “She doesn’t either, I suppose: they are always at one another’s throats.”

She set down her brandy half-drunk and swept out, but she left him with one Parthian shot: “If you are in an uncomfortable position, it is of your own making. It always has been; but you are a stupid boy, though much beloved.”

 _Much beloved._ He could remember thirty times Lady Snoke had said those words to him, and could remember how they had made him feel, once. He had thought himself so fine to have motherly affection from her; he had thought himself so clever to have earned the praise of the highest sticklers, had thought that he had transcended his mother’s foibles, had felt grateful for her condescension.

He had been a pathetic boy, just as stupid as she said—for though she did not lie when she called him ‘beloved,’ she did not say that _she_ loved him.

He drank down the brandy she had left, fancying, for one wild moment, that she had poisoned it with her touch. Of course it was no such thing. The only negative effects he felt were a head-ache the next day, and that was easily enough explained by the glasses of brandy numbered two, three, four, five, and six. Rey sent a servant to ask if he would join her for supper; he demurred.

If he were asked, he would not have been able to explain why he felt the need to drink so much; ‘too tense,’ he might have said, or ‘have to cut loose with the old fox and the young vixen in one house for so long,’ or some other thing that men do say when they want to make an excuse for their revels; but this would have been only conventional excuse-making. The truth was that he was proud of himself for telling Lady Snoke to go home—but that same encounter had proved him a coward.

“If you are in an uncomfortable position, it is of your own making,” she had said. She had meant that, though she held his vowels and had most improperly paid his other debts, and though she knew every secret he had cherished from the time he was a boy, these were small change against the momentous fact that he knew of Rey’s pregnancy. Innocent enough on its own, he had no doubt that Lady Snoke could twist that circumstance into the vilest contortions; if Snoke wished Rey to believe him a villain, why, with such a piece of knowledge she could make him seem the worst possible type.

If he were not a coward, he had recourse: he could confess the matter to her, explain how he had learned of it, tell her that he had known and had sought to spare her the pain of discussing the matter.

He could see it in his mind’s eye: himself the husband, kindly and paternal, inviting Rey to tell him all her fears and feelings; Rey the wife, quailing at the idea of confessing the loss of an heir, so grateful that he did not blame her—

If those visions were true, he ought not hesitate. But they were not true. Rey would cut him down with a glance, accuse him of all but lying to her, tell him that if he truly believed her to be a worthy spouse and help-meet he would trust her enough to speak of their loss. She would tell him that it was his fault that she had fled Hux’s hunting box, and would tell him that she might have died from losing the babe, and that the babe had not yet quickened and therefore had no soul to be lost. She would tell him that its loss was no tragedy, but only how life went, since she had survived; she would be resolutely unsentimental; but she would never forgive him, for she would see that _he_ was sentimental and yet had not sought to relieve her burden for so many months.

This scene he could not bear; and then, though he did not believe Rey an inconstant creature (she was terribly middle-class in her morals, sometimes) Mr. Dameron would surely be a willing shoulder for her to cry on. Mr. Dameron’s morals were far from middle-class.

So, coward as he was, Kylo continued on.

* * *

With Lady Snoke gone, the house seemed lighter; though there was little enough to do in the depths of winter. Rey busied herself with planning Christmas dinner, a tradition of Duke’s Alderaan honored more in the breach than in the observance in recent years. Since the manor burned, there was no hall large enough to accommodate all the residents of Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise even for country dancing and light refreshments, much less the great feast that had once been the general expectation; the puzzle of how to revive the tradition vexed Rey for days, until she hit upon the happy idea of using the parish halls, and bringing the feast to the villagers rather than the villagers to the feast.

The downside to this arrangement was that there were two parties to be planned instead of one, and Cook had to be sent to the rectories of each parish to prepare the feasts; at Duke’s Alderaan they ate cold food and toasted bread for three days around each of them. Rey sent Bullock and Turnbull to find a Yule log, and to gather holly, and they made each hall as festive as they might; she was surprised and pleased to find that Kylo oversaw the logs’ installation, one at Alderaan Dean and one at Alderaan Rise, and said not a word about being taken from his duties, though she knew that he had much to review before Parliament went into its late session in February.

‘Lady Bountiful,’ Kylo had mocked Rey once, and she had denied it; but the truth was that she enjoyed giving people things as much as she enjoyed taking apart a steam engine. She had learned the trick of it in the orphanage: one might think such places empty and cold, raising children who thought of nothing more than their own hungry bellies and inadequate cots, but the truth was that when ever one girl had a treat she was honor-bound to share it wth the rest of them. If Rey did well in her lessons, for instance, and was permitted to go on Miss Melton’s shopping-rounds with her, she would be given a biscuit at the baker’s, but she knew she could not eat it. Instead she would bring it back to the dormitory and share it out, crumb by crumb, to each other girl, so all had the same amount.

It seemed cruel sometimes, to carry a whole round sweet-smelling biscuit for several hours and not eat it, and to have to give almost all of it away in the end; but Rey remembered how much it had meant to her, on her very first day at Jakku House, when a big girl had done the same for her. Then, too, she knew what it was like to be _really_ hungry, not merely craving sweets; so she never failed to divide the biscuit as justly and fairly and widely as she could.

She had never quite squared this impulse for justice with her later life, either with Luke or in London. It was something of a relief to be able once again to divide her treat between people, to give them a Christmas feast to remember.

Kylo made his appearance at both parties, of course, first at Alderaan Rise and then at Alderaan Dean. The villagers were in their Sunday best, and at first there was an air of constraint. No one wanted to look a fool in front of the Duke. As the evening wore on, however, the ale and cider did its work, and the company became merry as grigs. Rey noticed, however, that Kylo was not mingling; he stood silent and spoke only when spoken to, which very few dared to do.

“Come,” Rey called to him, “I believe it is time for us to begin the dancing!”

This was an obligation he could not shirk; he unfolded himself from his chair and let his wife lead him to the head of the set. It was all to be country dances—no citified London waltzing here—and the first tune was so fast that neither of them could speak much. It did not matter. With the dancing open he knew his role: he must make sure that every young lady who wished to had the opportunity, and some of the matrons as well.

Rey thought him behaving very well, for she knew that to mix with so many people was surely a trial to him. Yet she revised her opinion as the evening went on. He did his duty with aplomb and in fact with every evidence of enjoyment, whether leading out the oldest spinster or the youngest schoolroom miss. One particularly forward girl of about six even asked _him_ to dance—and he indulged her in it, and capered like a fool with his diminutive partner.

Rey could not take her eyes off of them, even when her partner chastised her for paying no attention to the steps. She had never supposed that Kylo would want a child for any reason other than inheritance. Now that she considered it, however, she could imagine that he might see a child as a second chance, a way to make right the wrongs of his own upbringing.

The thought made her wish that he might have the opportunity to try. He had come so far, had changed so much, and yet she knew instinctively that he had yet further to go. He worked to improve Duke’s Alderaan for her sake, or for the sake of the intellectual challenge; he was beginning (she thought, as he bowed before Jyn Erso and swung her into the dance) to see that he was part of that great mesh that was called the country, that he had his role to play just as did the farmer and the butcher and the priest and the tailor; but he had never yet been touched, she thought, by real love for any thing except perhaps Lady Snoke.

A child might give him that; and she was the only one who could give him a child, a legitimate child, on whom he could project his hopes and dreams, whatever those might be.

Some small part of her, watching the breadth of his shoulders and the grace of his movements as he promenaded down the floor, admitted that she also wished she were permitted to touch him again—to touch him for more than the span of a dance, to touch him like a wife ought to touch her husband. That part of her did not care if he were friends with Lord Hux, or if his dear Lady Snoke was odious; that part of her did not care if he had ruined a hundred girls. It only cared for the fact that he was tall and strong and needed no corsetry, that he could pick her up like a doll if he chose, and that he was generous with his mouth and his fingers.

She would _not_ be slave to that part. But that did not mean she should not seduce her husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that there are now 29 chapters. IT KEEPS GROWING. While you're waiting for the next chapter, enjoy another illustration I commissioned from [Porgo](http://proporgo.tumblr.com)!!!


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another "I'm being eaten by bears" installment, where I was typing until late last night (yes, even for this short chapter—it was hard to write!) and my betas haven't seen it yet. Errors are not their fault, and are likely to be corrected some day in the hazy future.
> 
> If you don't want to read about sexytimes, skip down to the end of the first scene. (But...you know...I mean...if you DO...you're in luck this week!)

Rey’s opportunity came with the turning of the year. She had always celebrated her birth day on New Year’s Eve; not knowing the actual date, it seemed as good a time as any. She did not suppose her husband would recall the tradition; rather than waiting for him to make arrangements for a celebration, she announced her desire to sup very privately late that night. They planned to travel down to London on New Year’s Day—it was the only possible time to celebrate.

He must have known something was afoot when he discovered she had sent both Mordred and the servants away; she had caused a small table to be laid in their sitting-room, _not_ the usual place for supper, and lit a roaring fire and a fortune of candles till the room blazed bright almost as day. Still he came to table in his full and correct blacks, his neckcloth tied in a severe Mathematical knot.

Rey thought he blinked at her, when he entered—and well he might, she thought, for she had done her best to make herself beautiful. He had never yet seen her in a négligée, and certainly not such a diaphanous one as she wore now; even in the halcyon days of their early marriage, when she had not heard of Hux’s perfidy, she had never taken great pains with her appearance, supposing that he would take her as she was or not at all.

“I bring gifts,” he said, and drew a bottle from behind his back.

Examining it, Rey discovered that it was some sort of Champagne—“not Champagne,” he corrected. “It is a curiosity—a sort of effervescent nettle wine. It is called Toniray.”

Rey did not have the first idea what vessel to serve it in, and wished she had thought to provide them with coupes; but Kylo assured her that it was unnecessary. She brought him over to sit next to her—“for then we can look out the window as the snow falls.”

The brightness of the room made it quite impossible to see anything out-of-doors. She watched as Kylo realized this, and then realized that she was inviting him close; his face was like a clear pane of glass. He seemed constrained, almost nervous, and she was put in mind of their wedding night, when she had stayed awake waiting for him and he had never come.

He poured out the wine with a steady hand, then raised his glass to touch hers.

“What shall we drink to?” she asked, when he seemed likely to sip without toasting.

“You must say,” he replied.

“To us, then,” she said, and touched her glass to his, then twined her wrist around his to drink.

The wine was a curious blue-green color, but it was full-bodied and sweet, almost a dessert in itself. Rey liked it a great deal. Kylo was stone silent, observing her— _staring_ at her. A lock of that romantic hair had fallen over his brow, like a Gothic hero, but it did not look in the least ridiculous here in his ruined manor, with the snow muffling every sound but the fire.

“Tell me about the wine,” she said, seeking to put him at his ease.

He did. It was a speciality of Alderaan—one of the last bottles remaining; none had been made in thirty years, and he believed the secret of it had been lost. Mrs Dodd ought to have had the receipt, but it had burned in the fire, and no later attempts had ever lived up to the sweetness and effervescence and unique jewel-green color of the true Toniray. Rey was intrigued. Kylo could remember little about the process, the attempts that had been made to reproduce the vintage when he was a child; she questioned him about finings and ingredients, and was much disappointed in his answers. Soon they were in the realm of pure speculation, and they passed a happy half-an-hour drinking their wine and discussing these matters.

Rey was not a very good seductress. She had come in with all sorts of intentions, and things had been going very well until the matter of the wine distracted her. She realized her error when, recalling that they were at supper, Kylo began to fill a plate. She supposed that one could combine eating with lovemaking, but thought it would be much easier if they were provided with grapes, or oysters, or other such amorous foods. The cold cuts, dried apples and farmhouse cheese that Mrs Dodd had seen fit to lay before them were hardly easy to feed to one’s beloved, even if they were enlivened by half a soufflé, uneaten at dinner.

She was becoming rather lightheaded from the wine, however, and that gave her the courage to say “put that down. Do you think I had eating in mind?” and to lean over—they were placed a little apart on the settee—and cup his cheek with her hand.

“You want to,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. It was true. She had known how it would be: she could forget everything that had passed between them, the lost child, the betrayal for Hux, her illness—everything. She wanted to feel like she had the one day in the stables when he had lost control, when he had taken her before God and a dozen horses, when it was only luck that no servant had come to interrupt their coition.

He raised his hands to her shoulders, fingering the lacy froth of her gown. “This is in the way of a lure, then,” he said.

“Do you like it?”

“It doesn’t look like you.”

Rey was not sure whether to be offended. In truth she thought the négligée a little overwrought, a voluminous confection held together with satin bows down the front, but Bebe had sworn that it was the height of fashion. “What do I look like?”

Kylo did not speak. Instead he undid the top bow. Then the next. Then the next.

Rey’s mouth was dry. She had seen him unclothed in passing, but she could not remember ever being completely naked before him, certainly not in the light of candles and fire together—and yet she felt not in the least shy.

For his part, Kylo acted almost out of instinct. He had prepared as best he might for his wife’s birthday, had thought to bring her a gift, but he had not expected to be greeted that night by a scene out of some lascivious story. He had brought Rey nettle wine; pink champagne and vulgar trumpery diamonds might have been more to the point. It disturbed him to see her posing as if she were a courtesan, swathed in billows of transparent fabric and laying on a divan; it made him think of Hux’s birds of paradise.

The trappings of sensuality could not hide his Rey, however: she had the soul of an engineer, or a duchess. With each ridiculous bow he loosed, he saw a bit more of her golden skin, revealed another inch of her delicate bosom. One rose-tipped breast emerged, and without looking to see her reaction he bent his head to kiss it.

He could feel her reaction then. She shuddered. For a moment he feared that he had brought the issue of the child to her mind, that she was thinking of a different sort of mouth on her breast, that she was regretting—but no: she ran her sweet fingers through his hair and said “oh—that feels so _much_.”

It was an ungrammatical sentence, but he understood well her meaning, and he felt his cock twitch in response to such an artless expression of lust. Soon he had untied her gown to the waist, but he did not cease his attentions to her breasts until she squirmed and squealed.

“Out of that thing,” he ordered, pushing it down around her hips. “I want to see you.”

That commanding tone unavoidably reminded Rey of their first meeting: she had thought him eyesome, but a supercilious ass. Still it seemed a delicious comparison: then she had been poor, little, filthy and ill-dressed, shouting at a man she barely knew, and now—she was his goddess. She knew him too well now, could hear the desire in his voice.

“Do you like what you see?” she asked, as she stood and stepped free.

She could only half-imagine the vision she was presenting him, backlit by the fire, but she knew that she liked what _she_ saw. He still wore even his coat, and she could not tell even if he had a cockstand, so purely black were all his garments; but his eyes were glazed, vacant, longing.

“You know I do,” he said.

“Take off your coat, then,” she told him.

He obeyed without a word. She instructed him as he removed each article of clothing, from the diamond stick-pin in his neckcloth to his high-topped boots. He was clumsy in his movements, and yet when he fumbled she found that as tender as could be.

Finally he stood before her naked, and she examined him closely, taking advantage of the opportunity. He did not quite look like a classical statue: his torso was too wide, too powerful. She had never noticed the muscles that ran from his stomach to his groin, had never observed the dimples on his flanks, the weight of his thighs, the way they narrowed to his knees.

One part of him she was familiar with, though she had not seen it in some time. He was completely erect, as though her examination were as titillating as any caress—or perhaps he simply liked to see her nude.

If she could have read his mind, she would have realized that for him the stimulation was the exquisite tension between openness and fear. He did not by any means loathe his body: unlike his face, he knew it to be tolerably close to the ideal. He was not too shy to strip in the company of men. But Rey might pass any judgment; he knew she found him attractive, and yet she might say anything, find any fault…And yet she was _not_ finding fault. He could see the flush on her cheeks, could hear her breathing faster as she rounded the table to approach him.

There they were, naked before each other, no artifice now: it was a miracle to Kylo.

He disciplined himself not to move as Rey ran one small hand across the planes of his chest, around his waist, to the small of his back and his buttocks, around one thigh. He could not repress a groan as she reached the front, not quite touching him where he most wanted her.

“Sit down,” she said, and he obeyed instantly, and was rewarded when without a word she knelt over him and slowly, so painfully and deliciously and delightfully slowly, lowered herself onto his cock.

He tried his best to stay motionless, to let Rey remain in control, to let her dictate everything: it seemed suddenly like this was the way to apologize to her, to express his abjection, his willingness to do anything—anything!—if only she would keep on fucking herself on him, would keep touching his face with such tenderness, would keep organizing his house and his life, would keep smiling at him, would keep looking at problems with just such a serious and focussed face as she had now, as she reached for her pleasure.

He could not resist slipping his hand between them and finding her little pearl of flesh with his fingers, and at the slightest touch she convulsed and gasped and clenched around him.

Then he lost the will to obey, and bracing himself, stood with her still impaled on him, walked a few steps to wedge her against the wall, and drove into her so mindlessly that he could not even register her cries of pleasure, until he spent as well.

* * *

If Rey had wanted lovemaking to thaw her husband, her desires were thoroughly satisfied. Kylo brought her to the settee, where they ate their meal still naked; it did not seem to matter very much. He laughed more freely than she had ever heard him, and called her his “ray of light,” and even fed her morsels of cheese.

They were well sated in every respect when he seemed to recall something, and fished in his crumpled clothes—“your valet will be in such a miff,” Rey observed, and Kylo retorted “my valet can go hang”—for a little box.

“I had meant to give you your birthday-present sooner,” he said.

She opened it unceremoniously, supposing the contents to be ribands or lace or earbobs or some other trifle from the shops in Alderaan Dean, but she slowed when she saw the glint of gold within. A cream satin pillow cradled what Rey first thought was a necklace but then realized must be a headdress, a tiara of curious draping design, made such that its pendant jewel would fall in the middle of the wearer’s forehead.

Its pendant jewel: “jewel” was too plain a word for the stone that Rey found there. It was a ruby of enormous size and infinite fire, set in yellow gold. She raised the tiara to the firelight, and saw that it was perfectly, perfectly flawless, and carved utterly simply.

“How—?” she asked.

“It is the Jewel of Zenda,” he said. “It is one of the greatest treasures of my grandmother’s house, but I can tell you very little else about it: I know little else.”

“And of course you could not part with it,” Rey said, “even in your worst extremities,” for she knew without asking that the price of such a jewel would fetch Duke’s Alderaan two or three times over. It was the sort of object that wars might be fought over.

“How could I?” he asked, simply. “But it belongs to you, now.”

As much as Rey had been enraptured by the jewel, those words—said in the most loving tone she thought she had ever heard from her husband—sank her spirits. She had wanted her husband to love her, yes; she had wanted him to mend his ways, to change for her; she had wanted him to value her above his earlier friendships and be guided by her in all things.

Very well: he was. She could interpret such a gift in no other way. She had accomplished what she had wanted through no conscious action of her own; her conscious attempt to seduce him, intended as the first stage of a long campaign, had only brought to light the change of his feelings. But he might feel differently if he knew—

Kylo gently took the tiara from her hands. She found they were shaking. He fixed it around her brow, smoothing her tousled hair, tucking a lock behind one ear. She felt the cool weight of the jewel above her eyes. “It suits you,” he said. “You have always looked beautiful in red. My hot-blooded wife.”

He was smiling. She wanted to weep: the moment of her triumph and the moment of her defeat were the same! “I must tell you something, my lord,” she said.

His face fell.“Why ‘my lord’ now?”

“I have kept something from you for too long. My lord, when I became ill, it was not only the fall from my horse that kept me abed, nor the pneumonia that made me feverish. I was with child then, and I miscarried. I understand that you will be displeased; I deserve the greatest censure for misleading you.”

Rey raised her chin, ready to face whatever his reaction might be.

She was not prepared for him to laugh. “Thank God you finally told me!” he said, as she stared in astonishment. “My little ninny—I have known these many months!”

He laughed again, and the sound seemed to ring in Rey’s ears. He thought the miscarriage nothing. He thought the child nothing. He thought her lies nothing.

“I am pleased to learn that I may mislead you with impunity,” she said, and felt that her voice was coming from very far away. “I shall make a note of it.”

“That’s hardly what I meant,” Kylo said.

“Did you not? Why—I have been eating my heart out _these many months,_ thinking you would hate me if you knew how careless I had been with the heir of Alderaan. I need not have worried! It seems you care little for the child that died. I thought you might not want to be a father, but I did not think you so cold.”

Rey was aware that her voice was increasing in volume, and was also aware that she was perhaps not being precisely fair to her husband. She was not, however, used to feeling that she had been a fool. It is a sensation that is unpleasant even for those who are foolish very frequently. In Rey’s case, where she had not more than once or twice experienced deep embarrassment, it was fatal.

“I believed you to be grieving,” Kylo said, sitting back and gathering as much dignity as a mother-naked person possibly could. “I did not wish to impose my feelings upon you, who must feel so much more.”

“When did you learn of it?”

“Almost the moment I entered the house,” he confessed.

“And you lied to me! Let me continue believing that you were innocent of the matter! No, do not speak. I have been infamously used.” Rey began to dress, aware that however ridiculous her husband looked she must look even more so.

“Infamously used?” Kylo scoffed, though his tone was somewhat amused as well as dismissive. “My dear, I have said not a word to censure you, though you nearly killed yourself as well as the babe; I have, in fact, given you the greatest treasure of my house to-night. You will forgive me if I do not see how _infamously_ you have been used _._ ”

“Lady Snoke,” Rey said, another issue occurring to her. “Did you tell her of the child?” The chagrin on his face was all the response she needed. “You could tell her, but not me; you are worse than I thought. Do you know, I believed that you loved me, not a minute ago? I thought,” she made her voice high and mocking, “‘he must love me, or else he would not give me the only expensive thing that is his own.’ What a fool I am.”

Kylo could hardly be expected to have enough good sense to recognize that Rey’s outburst sprang from embarrassment, that she felt she had crawled all the way out on a limb and had it lopped off behind her. He declared “You’re no fool—of course I love you,” fortunately without stuttering over his words, but he could not leave it at that. “I begin to think, however, that your outward virtue hides the soul of a courtesan—if you can think of the Jewel of Zenda as only an expensive bauble!”

It was meant as much a joke as it was a scold, but Rey could not hear it that way. “I had been revising my opinion of you, sir,” she said, “but I begin to think you are just as bad as I thought when we first met. You certainly have not changed your opinion of me. I only marvel that you thought to marry a _courtesan._ ”

It was a palpable hit. If Rey had been embarrassed to discover that her secret was known, Kylo was wounded to hear that his wife thought him unchanged. He had consciously, very consciously tried to obey her precepts; he had put barriers between himself and his friends; yet she saw none of it—none of it!—over a trifling matter of word choice.

She could see he was hurt; but she did not know how hurt until he muttered, “If the world knew of the letters you continually send Lieutenant Dameron and Captain Finn, they would certainly call you a courtesan!”

This piece of childishness was monstrously untrue, and Kylo must have known it; but Rey did not consider that fact relevant to the case. “You accuse me of unfaithfulness,” she said.

“No—”

“You do,” she repeated, “and I will not deny it. That is not to say I admit to it. I will not answer your charge, for it is as stupid as it is cruel, when you are in constant communication with your dear Lady Snoke.” The tiara swung crazily on her forehead as she stood, clutching her frothy négligée about her shoulders. “I believe you ought to remain at Duke’s Alderaan for a few days, rather than accompanying me to-morrow; I do not wish your company on the journey.”

“ _Damn_ me if I will,” her husband snarled, as she swept out of the room as regally as she could manage.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few hours early today! I'm having a busy day tomorrow, and wanted to get this up so I don't have to worry about it. Enjoy—and, once more, this is coming fresh from my typing fingers to you, so it's unbetaed and Not My Betas' Faults.

The next morning, Rey woke up feeling absolutely shattered. She put it down to the Toniray; but some wiser part of her knew that she was also dreadfully sad about fighting with her husband, and dreadfully angry with him for speaking to her in such a thoughtless and cruel manner, and perhaps a very little bit embarrassed that she had not managed to remain calm, cool, and collected throughout.

Her bad mood persisted all through the drive to London, and beyond; she could not look at any thing out the window without thinking of how she had ridden Force through the storm, or (later, when they were out of Kylo’s demesne) what it had been like to first travel the road leaving London and going to Duke’s Alderaan, with her husband beside her in the carriage. It occurred to her that he had said “I love you,” and though it was larded around with insults aplenty she could not convince herself that it was not a heartfelt statement.

This bothered her more than any thing else; how dare he love her and yet call her a courtesan? How dare he love her and yet laugh at her?

She arrived in Town to a house that had been turned inside-out by its cadre of servants, made entirely sparkling and ready for its mistress. It was strange to mount the steps as a Duchess; strange to see the butler she had charged past truckle to her; strange to look out the windows from its second floor and look down on the square below and think, _this is the street on which I live._

Without Kylo present she went through every room of the house. She was pleased with what she found, in general: the furniture was by no means in the first stare of fashion, but neither did it consist of the ugly antiques that were the general rule at Duke’s Alderaan. If the house were decorated to a masculine taste, that could hardly be considered a surprise—but she determined to feel no compunction about making it over to her own liking as soon as might be. He could simply live with whatever she chose.

Rey would not have leisure to indulge in decorating for some time, however, for Miss Rose Tico was set to arrive the very next day. The girl who alit from the hired carriage, however, was very far from the girl who Rey had first met a year previous. The bloom was gone from her cheeks; her clothes, out-of-date the previous year, were now quite far from the peak of fashion; and everything in her bearing suggested that she had been worn down by family and their cares. “Hallo, Rey,” she tried to sally, “the Duchess of Alderaan—could you have imagined it a year ago?”

“Stupid,” Rey told her, “of course I could—we used to joke about the Dark Duke—remember?”

“Of course, but joking is very far from being. You look fine!”

Rey could not quite return the compliment, for she did not like to lie, but Rose did not seem to expect it. After a night’s sleep, however, she seemed fresher, and a visit to the modiste’s cheered her immensely even as it provided a point of friction.

“I cannot accept your charity,” Rose said, when Rey ordered the bill sent to the Duke of Alderaan’s townhouse.“I do not know how I will pay, but pay I will—that I promise you!”

“Less charity, more reparations,” Rey told her, and unfolded all that had occurred with regard to Kylo’s friendship with Lord Hux. Rose had not been entirely innocent of the source of Rey’s quarrel with her husband, of course; but Rey had hesitated to write anything terribly personal in a letter which she knew would be read by Mrs. Tico. “So,” she said, rounding out her tale, “you see that I have permission from my husband to ‘bring you into fashion,’ which must include your toilette. And I do not think I would need it anyway: all his money was truly _my_ money, you know.”

“I still do not want it,” Rose said, “for it feels as though I am profiting off of Paige’s misfortune,” but Rey could tell that she did not mean what she said. Slowly, slowly, it was as though Rose were relaxing, returning back to the self she had been in London before the events of the previous Season; Rey thought it was worth two hundred pounds to see her friend a little lighter, a little happier again.

It was not until late that night, however, when they had eaten a pleasant dinner and sat comfortably chatting — Rey telling Rose of the plans for the canal at Duke’s Alderaan as Rose plied her needle on a pretty petticoat — that Rose finally admitted how awful the preceding months had been.

The words came slowly at first, a few sidewise observations about the nature of country life, and the way that people seem always to interfere with one’s business and bother one about insignificant things. Then she confessed that it was difficult, after escaping her mother so frequently in the crushes of London, to be once more the demure daughter sitting quietly until she was asked to dance; and then—then it all came forth, the little disappointments, the sense of being shoved into shoes one has outgrown.

“The worst of all was that Poe and Finn were _there,_ ” she said, “just _there_ , across the room sometimes even, and yet I was obliged to cut them; and if you do not think I was obliged to, you have never been in such a situation.” Rey nodded sympathetically, although she never had been, of course. “Of course Mama thought that I was in love with one of them, or both of them, and that I am such a child that if she were merely to keep me away from them, I would soon forget them.

“She would say that the proof that I am a child is that I have observed what happened to Paige, and that I am still head-over-heels,” Rose continued, her hands twisting in the petticoat on her lap. “But she is wrong—very wrong to compare the two situations. Paige thought herself in love with a man of no character, however high his station; I know myself, and I know Poe, and Finn, and however unhappy the difference in our stations may be, or however poor we may be, I know that they are men of character, and so even if we were no longer received…” Her voice trailed away, as she fought back tears.

“Poe _and_ Finn?” Rey asked, a little shocked.

Rose smiled weakly. “You cannot separate them, you know,” she said simply.

“But you cannot marry both!”

“Perhaps I’ll flip a coin then!” Rose retorted, with more fire than Rey had ever heard her use. “Why does it matter? I’ll never marry either—not so long as my parents live.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. “Your parents are not here now.”

“My majority—”

“Is no matter. Why, have you never heard of Gretna Green?”

It was clear from Rose’s expression that she had heard of Gretna Green, the town just across the Scottish border where marriages could be performed without banns or license, but had never thought of herself going there. Her face was filled first with surprise, then shock, then a sort of dawning delight. “We have no conveyance—I have spoken to neither of them in months—”

Rey clasped her friend’s hands in her own. “Leave that to me,” she said. “Only swear to me that you truly mean this, that you will not regret it, and that you do not care if it places you well beyond the pale.”

“Will you recieve me?” Rose asked.

“Always.”

“Then I care not a whit for any of the ladies of good ton,” Rose declared. “If they would throw Paige away, they may not have me either.”

“Very well,” Rey said, with growing excitement. “I shall write to your swains; then this is what we shall do…”

* * *

The first day of the Duke of Alderaan’s year did not begin auspiciously.

He woke with the knowledge that he had angered his wife—again—and that he was not welcome in her bed—again—and, worse, with both a knot of resentment in his gut (why, _why_ must she take every word he said in the worst possible way?) and a creeping awareness that he had not behaved as he ought.

Resentment was an old friend. He was used to nursing it, used to letting it dictate his behavior. It drove him out of his room and to the ruined part of the house, where he smashed an old wicker chair to flinders and then took its leg to one of the ancient mirrors in the old ballroom. The glass was too old and thick to shatter easily, though he struck at it as hard as he could. In the end he was left in a dusty, empty room, the mirror barely cobwebbed with cracks, heaving with exertion and feeling like an idiot.

“You do look like the Dark Duke,” he told himself, sneering at his own reflection. “Like something from Byron’s poetry indeed.”

That thought took the wind out of his sails. It was hard to rage tempestuously when one knew one was behaving like a character from a lady’s fantasy of romantic manhood; and, in any case, it put him in mind of his mother. _She_ was likely entertaining Lord Byron even as they spoke, for she had no fear of scandal and little concern for morality: Byron might have committed incest with a dozen half-sisters and Leia would say “well, has he hurt any body?” and carry on with her salons and her books and who knew what else.

No, no one could accuse Lady Leia of respectability, but they all agreed that she knew the human heart very well, at least when it came to any one but her son. And she knew Rey: they had been as thick as thieves when Rey first came to London, and (though Kylo hated to admit it) they were very alike.

Whatever Rey wished, Kylo could not rusticate for ever. He would have to return to London for the opening of Parliament, and that was not so very far away, now.

He could go and stay at his club, of course.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He never could see much of either of his parents in his own features: the story was always that he took after his grandfather. Perhaps a bit about the eyes—but that line of thought led him to his father, and to the look on his father’s face when he was pierced with the sword.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to recall it, every moment of it.

He could go stay at his club. Perhaps he would have to. But he would first discover if his mother would turn her son away.

* * *

 

“I think it is a very fine notion,” Lady Leia said, “but I am amazed that you have asked _me_ to help—I have neglected you so very badly.”

She and Rey were standing in the largest room in Kylo’s townhouse, discussing Rey’s ambitious plans for a ball to open the Season.

It was not only a ball to open the Season, of course. It would need to establish Rey’s credit in the eyes of Society, to raise her up as a hostess of the highest caliber, not merely a diamond of the first water; and to do that she must have the right guests. Some of the list of desirables were easy enough to obtain: Lady Snoke, Mrs. Phasma and Countess Holdo would certainly attend, either for Kylo’s sake or her own. Lord Byron or Lady Caroline Lamb might be interesting to host, although hardly a recommendation to sticklers; Lady Leia might be a conduit to one of them, though likely not both. A year before, Beau Brummell would have been a prize to catch indeed, but his presence would have surely prevented the Prince Regent from attending—and the Prince Regent was Rey’s ultimate quarry. He might run with a rackety set, might have a daughter quite Rey’s own age and might love nothing more than to flirt with young girls, but his attendance at a party was reckoned a coup.

And Leia was certainly the way to the Prince Regent. They had played together as children, and had never entirely broken the acquaintance, though (she had told Rey) he was for ever teazing her for her politicking, and she was for ever mocking him for his creaking corsets. In part it was his patronage that prevented Lady Leia from ever falling entirely out of polite society, however much Lady Snoke might desire her to disappear for ever.

“I suppose you have neglected me a little,” Rey said, not wishing to annoy.

“No—no—be frank with me. I did not come to see you. It was very bad of me. I ought to have been at your sick-bed.”

“It could not have been comfortable.”

“Well, and why should it be? Ben and I are neither of us comfortable people,” Leia said, shaking one of the great windows’ draperies and dislodging a puff of dust. “See here? The maids haven’t been thorough. _I_ might not care, but Lady Snoke will walk in here and look immediately for any error; so you’d better have a word with your housekeeper.”

“I understand there was a great deal to do—that most of the rooms haven’t been in use for years.”

“How could they have been, since Ben wouldn’t have anyone come keep house for him? I won’t let you dodge the issue, though: I’m trying to apologize to you, damn it.”

Rey made a theatrical little gasp. “You _are_ mad, bad, and dangerous to know!”

“Not I, child,” Leia said, “only my stupider friends. I didn’t want to have it out with Ben; it’s not pleasant. I did not value you as I ought, however, to let that stop me from coming. I do beg your forgiveness.”

This Rey had to take seriously. “Of course you’re forgiven,” she said, “even if your absence meant that the detestable Lady Snoke took your place. The way you can make it up to me is—helping with the ball!”

“I would have done that in any case,” Leia grumbled.

“Well, then, you shall have to do more than merely tell me how much champagne to order and where the flowers must be placed. If I send a card to the Prince Regent, can you make certain that he comes?”

Leia’s keen eyes narrowed. “He’s in Brighton,” she said. “It would be yeoman’s work to dig him out of that pile he calls a palace. What do you want the Prince Regent for?”

“To establish my credit in society,” Rey said primly.

“What need have you for more credit than you have already, Your Grace?” Leia crossed her arms. “Politics? —No, for then you’d be conspiring with Ben, and I’ll warrant you haven’t a single political thought in your head.”

“Oh, you are too severe! I have many political opinions—on the Luddites, and on the slave trade, and—”

“Those are _moral_ opinions, my dear, not political ones. You have not answered my question.”

Rey pursed her lips, tried to decide how to explain—and then simply gave Lady Leia the whole, unvarnished truth about Rose, Finn, and Poe, from the moment they had all met through their sojourn in Rose’s home county to the tearful reunion they had enjoyed in Rey’s sitting-room not two days prior. Rey had stepped outside, allowing them to discuss the situation among themselves, and when she returned she had found them seated with their heads together, Rose in the middle, each of her hands clasped by one of the gentlemen; she had never seen three wider smiles.

The trio had determined that Finn was to be the bridegroom, a sentimental choice, for Poe’s family connexions would have made him the sensible option; they would head for the border in easy stages, there being no need for headlong romantic flight, and be wed over the anvil.

The ball would take place upon their return to London, and serve both as a wedding-announcement (though Rey would see that it were properly sent to all the papers of note as well) and as a way to sort the wheat from the chaff: those who wished to cut them for making such a scandalous alliance would have a golden opportunity to do so, and it would put an end to those friendships which no one would wish to continue.

“ _And_ it’ll be one in Lady Snoke’s eye,” Lady Leia observed, “as she’ll have graced your party with her presence, and be forced either to make an intolerable scene, or to pretend that she approves. Very well: I’m for it. You shall have your Prince if I can move him. But Rey—have you spoken to Ben about this plot of yours?”

“You may have noticed that my husband is not here,” Rey said. “I have not heard from him since I left Duke’s Alderaan.”

“I can tell you where he is,” Leia said, “he’s staying at my house.”

Rey stared.

“Oh, don’t make that stupid face at me,” Leia finally told her, not unkindly. “Come down to the front sitting-room, and ring for tea, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

* * *

Kylo had arrived at Lady Leia’s house the day after Rey had come to town. There had been no letter telling her to expect him, no sign at all of his visit. His mother had simply lifted her head from her writing to see that he had snuck past Threepio, or bribed him, or some combination of the two, and that he was sitting quietly, waiting for her to finish her thought.

Another person might have been irritated, or thought they had been snuck up on; Leia knew perfectly well, however, that she lost all touch with the outside world when she worked, and could hardly be angry with her son for taking advantage of the fact. She was ready to twit him about it, and to generally repel any nastiness that might be headed her way, when he looked up at her and said, “Once you said that if I told you how I had quarrelled, you would tell me where I had gone wrong. Will you?”

 _That_ was a surprise.

He had told her a lightly expurgated version of events—expurgated mostly because, Rey supposed, it could not be pleasant to describe one’s marital intimacies to one’s mother. What struck Rey, hearing his version of events (perhaps a little smoothed-over by Lady Leia’s retelling) was how truthful he had been, and yet how untruthful. He said that he had laughed from relief, and told her that she needn’t worry. Well, he had done so, but he had called her a ninny! He said he had been irritated at how she seemed not to understand the importance of the Jewel of Zenda, and had admitted that he ought to have moderated his response; but how could he have said she had the soul of a courtesan, under any circumstances?

Leia merely nodded in agreement at all Rey’s protestations, and sipped her tea, which she took so strong and sweet and milky that it resembled porridge more than any thing else.

“What did you tell him?” Rey finally asked.

“That he was being a self-centered ass, of course,” Leia said. “And do you know—I think he heard it.”

For the first time since he was a very young boy, Ben had listened to his mother. It was not that he felt all that was proper: he did not. He had complained that he had behaved just as Rey had wished him to, complained that he had thought of nothing but her comfort and safety, complained that he had even come to like Jyn Erso, and yet for the briefest moment in which he lost his temper, Rey had become so _angry_!

“This may come as a surprise to you,” Leia told him, “but you are not the only one who can bear a grudge. Rey has plenty of reasons to doubt your good intentions. The question is whether you’ll remain steadfast in trying to convince her. I have seen no evidence that you can; but I hope you will try.”

That was where their conversation had ended, and Leia had no sense of whether her point had been made or not. But he had asked to stay with her for a while, and she had agreed, and therefore he had been in her house for the past week, when he was not out at his club or Watier’s or paying calls on others in Parliament.

Rey was astonished. She had not given any thought to what her husband might do, except to be grateful that he had not imposed his presence upon her, but if she had she would never have imagined that he might reconcile with his mother. When Leia asked for permission to relay the news of the ball, therefore, Rey gave her consent: “it is his house after all,” she said, “and it would seem strange indeed if he were not present.”

It was not until after Leia had left that it occurred to Rey that she had not promised not to tell Kylo of the situation with Finn, Poe and Rose. For one wild moment she wondered if he would find some way to tell Rose’s parents and manage to stop the marriage. But the die was cast. Leia would tell him, or she would not; he would act, or he would not. The threesome were already on their way to Gretna Green; either they would succeed in their object, or not.

But there was one more thing to do, with regard to her husband. Before she had left, Lady Leia had given Rey a little key - a brass key, the sort to fit a writing desk. “Ben gave it me,” she said, “and asked me to give it to you; I believe it fits the desk in his bedroom—but what he keeps there, I do not know.”

Rey mounted the stairs. She hesitated at the door to his room, then entered. She had been there once before, when she toured the house, and hardly registered that it was not one more spare bedroom: it was utterly devoid of personal effects.

Now, however, she could feel his presence. This was his place: he was like a black shadow in the corner of the room, watching her. She crossed to the writing-desk and unlocked it, and opened it, and considered what was inside.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd once more - but, I hope, you will find this chapter satisfactory.

Rey did not know what she had expected. Bluebeard’s closet—no, not that, but something like it, perhaps. What she found, however, was a mass of papers, some yellowing with age. Letters. But the spidery script meandering across each page didn’t belong to Kylo. It was Luke’s handwriting. They were one-half of her husband’s correspondence with his uncle.

At first Rey thought that Kylo was trying to give her a gift. Just seeing Luke’s dear penmanship, unexpected as it was, nearly brought tears to her eyes. She had not thought of her guardian in months, but now she was swamped with memory: how he would shake his head when he thought she was going out on a limb. How he would listen, so patiently, to his tenants’ concerns, and how she could tell that he was inwardly amused by their ridiculousnesses, and how he never teazed them about it, knowing that he had to be the judge and master and could not indulge his own sense of humor.

As she began to read, however, she began to realize that Kylo was not trying to give her a gift. He was trying to tell her the truth.

The letters were dated from ten years past. They had been sent from Ahch-To Hall while Kylo was up at Oxford. They were not kind.

Some, of earlier date, could only be described as ‘pompous.’ Luke was very certain that he knew all about the ill company Kylo was falling into at school. Kylo was not destined for the Church; therefore he ought to give up Oxford and pay better attention to his estates, which Leia had neglected long enough. Kylo ought not to associate with Lady Snoke: she was a “back-biter, and a woman of harsh words for others, who has no reason to herself be proud. The Good Book says to take the beam out of your own eye—” The hypocrisy in such a letter was astonishing.

Rey tried to reconcile this Luke with the one she had known. It was a struggle. Sure, he had been strict: but had the orphanage not been strict? And had he not tempered every harsh word with a kind one?

But she had had the benefit of his physical presence, and she had had the benefit of being the child he had chosen, not the nephew he was obliged to own. She could not read Kylo’s responses, but she could well imagine them: if he were hot-tempered and hasty now, prone to outburst and violent recriminations, then how much more must he have been as a very young man? And Luke’s replies soon took on the same tone.

It was unpleasant to read such unpleasant letters, but Rey forced herself to do it. She hesitated, almost, to reach for the final paper, lying there so innocent at the bottom of the desk. She did not want to know what bitter words were written there.

They were as bad as she might have imagined. “You are not my nephew,” Luke had written. “I wish never to see your face again. Do not expect to be received in my house. Do not expect to be received by my friends. I shall ensure that the world knows of your ill-treatment of your mother, your rudeness to me, your unkindness to your tenants. You have made your own bed; now you must lie in it.”

Rey traced the final letters’ loops with one finger.

Perhaps Luke had not loved her so _very_ much, to leave his fortune to her. Perhaps he had merely hated Kylo.

Deep in her heart she bore Luke such great loyalty that she wanted to excuse his brutishness. Kylo had surely behaved abominably. Even from only half their correspondence she knew that he had womanized, had gambled, had been constantly in trouble, had neglected his studies, neglected his tenants, neglected his own good name, yet been sanctimonious towards his parents despite all his own faults. He had done every thing wrong.

Yet Rey’s innate honesty, and the bond she had forged with Kylo despite his faults, argued against Luke. Who could cast off his nephew and his heir, a very _young_ man, and a young man raised by parents more concerned with their own troubles than his? Did the circumstance not call for understanding more than strictness? Surely Luke could see that Kylo had fallen in with people who would indulge his every whim, torment him if he did not join them in their debauches, mock him if he shewed softness or kindness to his lessers. Surely Luke could see that every thing in the world prompted Kylo to exalt himself over others, and the fact that Kylo could give in to such temptations meant only that he had a weak conscience and a weak spirit—that he ought to be pitied more than hated.

No, the writing-desk was no Bluebeard’s closet. It held nothing very startling at all: only the history of a young man of no character who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. And the history of his uncle, who ought to have understood his situation, and did not.

Indeed, after reading the letters she found she pitied Kylo most sincerely. She had had the best of Luke, and he the worst. Having no parents, she had no one to disappoint her.

Until now. For she _was_ disappointed in Luke.

And yet—she could see Luke even now, the crinkles at his eyes, the grey of his beard, the countrified tweeds he habitually wore. She remembered what he had told her of his own childhood, raised by his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, how he had dreamed of military glory. He had described Owen as a strict man, a farmer to his bones, devoted to honor and piety and getting the crops in: and that was how he had raised her. That was how he had treated Kylo: as a disciplinarian.

Lady Leia, too: she had been her own mistress as a child, a political force before she left the schoolroom. _She_ had no trouble with other children, and she had barged her way into every room from which she was excluded, _convinced_ her father to spend time with her. Rey could well imagine Leia assuming that her own son would take care of himself; after all, she always had.

The great sweep of times past seemed to loom over Rey, just as it had in the mirrored room at Duke’s Alderaan. Every one was playing out their childhoods again, in the roles of parents this time. Kylo might be a devoted father—but perhaps they would be like Leia and Han, oil and water, always fighting. They had made a good start on _that_ already. Then Kylo would go off to London to his political concerns, and Rey would stay home at Duke’s Alderaan—

No. She would not let this cycle repeat itself again.

Of course, that left her only two alternatives—to leave Kylo for ever, or to find some way to forgive him for his many faults.

* * *

Benjamin Solo, the Duke of Alderaan, Kylo or Ren to his friends and his enemies, sat alone in his mother’s house.

He was used to being alone. He had been alone for much of his life—until he had found Hux’s friendship, and with it others’ approval. It was not a new experience, to be alone. It was a very familiar experience to be alone in his mother’s house.

But this aloneness was different, because for the first time he knew that he had chosen it. In the past he had always found a villain to rail against: his mother for being a lightskirt, his father for being a rake and a smuggler. In those rare moments he had been on the outs with Hux, he had blamed Hux; and when he felt most alone and in want of feminine companionship, he blamed the entire female sex for being either virtuous and boring or unworthy barques of frailty.

That had been untrue from the beginning. He had known it all along, and ignored the better angels of his conscience. Now he could not ignore them any longer.

His mother had left him alone in her house, after several days of hosting him and treating him with remarkable restraint. He had asked her to explain to him, in small words, where he had gone wrong, and she had done so; but she had not flayed him with her sharp tongue.

Leia had told him nothing that he did not already know: he had laughed when his wife had bared her soul to him, and it did not matter that he did not mean to offend her. He had casually called Rey a courtesan, and it did not matter that Rey would be the first to defend courtesans as women simply making the best of a bad hand. He had done these things at a moment of great tenderness. He had done them not because he had wished to harm any one but because he could not think of any one but himself, and that was worse than if he had been intentionally vicious.

“But I can not turn back time,” he had said to his mother, when she was finished enumerating his faults.

“No,” she had said, “I can’t help you there.”

“Then what!” He had spoken with more violence than he had intended, and Mordred and Gary—fast friends now and curled up together on the sofa-bed—raised their heads to stare at him. They were an ill-assorted pair, one long and lean and elegant and the other fat and snorting, and their startled expressions made him moderate his tone. “I do not know how to show her—and I do not know if I can avoid hurting her again. I am, as you may have noticed, a monstrous ass.”

Leia had burst into laughter as he sat heavily down on the sofa next to the dogs, letting them climb all over him. His jacket had been ruined anyway; what more could dog hair do to it? “I think saying that is an excellent start,” she had said. “I doubt you need to become an angel over night: Rey knew who she was marrying. But she will require more evidence of your sincere desire to change than mere words…”

So she had gone to see Rey, come back with a plan of action, then departed for Brighton posthaste; and now he sat, alone, in her house, with not even the dogs to keep him company—for Leia was to see the Prince Regent, and the Prince Regent was fond of Gary, and Gary was fond of Mordred.

Kylo had been staring at his letters for what seemed a very long time. They had come in a bundle from Duke’s Alderaan: several on the topic of the new session of Parliament, one from his steward on preparations for the spring planting, and one from Jyn Erso recarding the canal project.

Was Rey looking at letters now? At his old letters?

One of the people he had blamed, in the past, for his loneliness was his Uncle Luke. Hux had not gone up to Oxford at the same time as he, and so he felt himself for a few months back in the bad old days of Eton, isolated and desperate. But Oxford gave him more opportunities for stretching his legs than Eton had; there were girls in Oxford, and taverns, and most of all there were fights; and he was intelligent enough to finish his work and have plenty of time left over for drinking too much and nursing a sore head in the morning.

Uncle Luke had not made those choices for him.

Uncle Luke had been a pompous ass.

He felt the old anger rising in him again, though it had been years since those miserable days: one thing he was very good at, he knew, was grudge-holding. If it had not been for Luke he might have left Lady Snoke behind him with Eton. If it had not been for Luke he might have found other friends than Hux. If it had not been for Luke—

But the letters on his desk weren’t from Luke. They were from people who depended on him. His eyes caught Jyn Erso’s signature, precise and exact. Luke was dead. But other people were alive. The anger did not entirely subside, but it faded, replaced with a stronger sense of purpose.

Rey needed proof that he meant to change, did she?

There was still time yet before her party: he had time to take action, and actions spoke louder than words.

* * *

“I am very pleased to see you so well,” Mrs Phasma said, “But had I not heard that Miss Tico was coming to stay with you?”

“Miss Tico is indisposed,” Rey said firmly.

It was impossible, of course, to be not at home to morning callers—it would be an unpardonable social solecism. Rey had only hoped that the fact that the Season had not yet properly started would reduce the number of visitors she would have to entertain. She had not made a secret of the fact that Miss Tico was planning to stay with her, though now she wished she had. It would have been much, _much_ simpler.

There was a mixed blessing: Lady Snoke had not come to call, though she had accepted the invitation to Rey’s party. Rey was relieved to not be forced to play politeness with the woman she had come to think of as her worst enemy. Rey could not be comfortable, however, with the fact that she did not merit a visit. Snoke was still the arbiter of the _ton_ ; she still controlled entrance to Almack’s. If she were to withdraw her acceptance of the invitation, to rescind her approval of Rey even before the night of the ball—

But Rey had no control over that, and she could not worry about it. She had quite enough to worry about there in Kylo’s front drawing-room in the form of Mrs Phasma, who quite dwarfed her surroundings. Rey could not feel easy in her presence for many reasons, but perhaps the worst was the sense that here was a person who was capable of physically overpowering any one, but who capriciously refused to do so. It was a sense of power on a tight leash, so tight it might snap at any time.

“Oh,” Mrs Phasma said, tossing her golden curls, “I had the impression she never came to stay at all. But then—so funny!—I had a letter from her mother, you know, asking how she did. Mrs Tico has not heard from her daughter in a _week_!”

“Shocking,” Rey said, as blandly as she could manage.

“I have heard also that you have great plans for your ball,” Mrs Phasma continued, undeterred.

“I dare say it may be a crush,” Rey said. “I hope it will be; it shows every sign to be, for I have received many promises of attendance.”

“And shall your husband be home to open the ball with you?”

Rey saw the malice in Mrs Phasma’s ice-blue eyes. It would be somehow more comfortable if that malice was personal, if Rey believed that she had made a true enemy—but it was not. It was the malice of a viper, whose poisonous strike has nothing to do with anger, or vengeance, or fear, but only blind and pernicious instinct. Mrs Phasma could not be anything but what she was.

“Of course. One cannot have a party without a host and hostess both,” Rey said, though in fact she was not entirely certain when she would see Kylo again. She had been awaiting his return every day, as she ordered the champagne and worked with Cook and directed decorations, yet he had not darkened his own door. Lady Leia had written to say that she thought— _thought_ that the Prince of Wales might attend the party, but that she was obliged to dance attendance on him further if the thing were to be accomplished—and she had filled the page with good-natured complaints about Brighton and her old friend so that there was not a single line left to tell Rey whether her son was with her, or still in residence at her house, or some other place.

Phasma smiled and said something proper, but the smile did not reach those ice-blue eyes, and Rey was under no illusions that she was fishing for information. Anything Rey said would be communicated to Lady Snoke, she was sure—and if Lady Snoke did not know where Kylo was…

Kylo was _not_ like Mrs Phasma, Rey decided. He might not be any kinder; he might not be a nice man; but he did not have Phasma’s kind of animal menace. For that matter, he did not have Lady Snoke’s willful self-absorption. He could be cruel, and self-absorbed, for a certainty. He did not intend to be, however, and she had proof. He had followed her orders most exactly, had tried to conform himself to her wishes.

Would he continue in the same vein? Leia must have made the purpose of Rey’s party clear to him; if he attended, he stamped his approval on the plot, and would have thrown himself fully behind her scheme and against his former mentor.

Rey found herself beginning to hope when Mrs Phasma, rising to leave at the end of her proper quarter of an hour, said casually, “My dear Rey, let me give you some advice: if you mean to do anything shocking, do not.”

“Why,” Rey said, her mouth suddenly dry, “what ever can you mean?”

“Your husband is an exacting man,” Mrs Phasma said. “He is used to rule in his own house, and I have seen him cut girls quite completely for minor infractions—the wearing of primrose satin, for example, when they were meant to be still in mourning. He will cut you off if you do not meet his standards.”

If Lady Snoke had delivered this ultimatum, it would have been with a pitying gaze such as would convince the stubbornest girl in the world that she was really acting only out of concern. Mrs Phasma could not quite achieve that cloying tone. She sounded like she was doing exactly what she was doing: delivering a threat.

“What, exactly, might one do that is improper?”

“It is more the guest list that I fear he might object to,” she said, “if, for example, he is not in town; I have not heard that he stays here. He has no love for Lieutenant Dameron, and while you cannot avoid receiving his mother, I cannot imagine that it would give him any pleasure to entertain her.”

All the tension went out of Rey in a rush: Phasma did _not_ know about Rey’s plans, not any thing! Her sallies with regard to Rose were exploratory, nothing more! Kylo had told her nothing! “Oh, and I suppose the Prince Regent is too fast, and Caro Lamb too scandalous,” Rey said. She did not know what she meant by it, could not control her own tone of voice, thought it was a miracle that she was not laughing. Then, a further miracle: Phasma’s eyes crinkled, narrowed, and a flash of pleasure spread across her face. She did not know that Rey was amused—she thought the emotion that thrummed in her voice was embarrassment!

“You are not very good at joking, dear Rey,” Mrs Phasma said, now gloating over her success. “No one could believe even you so lost to propriety as to invite Caro Lamb! I am glad you will allow me to guide you in your invitations. Speaking of which, I had tea with dear Lord Hux the other day—you must speak to your servants, for he has received no notice of your party, which _must_ be an oversight!”

“Oh, by all means bring him to the party,” Rey said, with a sense of delicious anticipation, “what an oversight, indeed! I am dreadfully, dreadfully embarrassed!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the past I've said we were likely to extend beyond 29 chapters. Now I don't think that's true! I'm going to be able to finish it up! Rather, we'll have 28 chapters and an epilogue. Which means we have only three Tuesdays of updates left. I can't believe it! Your support has meant so, so much to me throughout the course of this story. Every comment has really given me life. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and I'll see you in a week!


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, you get this chapter hot off the keyboard AGAIN. And a day early! I couldn't wait to share it with you. Before you read, please go look at [this amazing piece of Regency!Phasma fan art that Omnom808 drew](https://twitter.com/Omnom808/status/1051411193137524736)—oh my GOD it's lovely!! CANNOT COPE!!

“Are you certain that this style is _au courant_?” Rose asked, running her hands doubtfully over the smooth wings of her hair.

“Of course it is, pea-goose,” Rey replied, not glancing over: Bebe was too hard at work putting the finishing touches on her own hair. “You look marvelous. Finn’s eyes will fall out of his head, Poe won’t be able to keep his hands off you—”

“And my mother will faint,” Rose finished. She shook her head, feeling how no curls bounced around her ears. “Well, it does become me better than the old way.”

“Ever so much better,” Rey said. “You have given up—”

She stopped, and when Bebe patted her shoulders to tell her they were done, she examined her friend.

Rose was blooming, there was no other word for it. As a young matron she now was permitted to put off the insipid pastels of girlhood, and they had convinced a modiste to alter one of Rey’s dresses for her. The royal blue of the silk-satin became Rose better than it ever had Rey; she had sapphires from Rey as well, though borrowed not given, and their sparkle made her look like the young lady of fashion she had never really been.

Rey had chosen her own clothing carefully. She knew that it was another front in her war with Lady Snoke—for that was how she had come to think of the ball. A cloth-of-gold dress was accented with red velvet ribands, ruched about her shoulders into bunches and swags; her hair was dressed very high, and on her forehead the Jewel of Zenda sparkled defiantly.

The Jewel had made Rey pause: did she truly wish to wear it? What would her husband think? But the symbolism had been too much: Lady Snoke had never worn the Jewel, nor Mrs Phasma, and they never would. They might have controlled Lord Alderaan’s votes in Parliament for years, and they might yet do so in the future if things went poorly for Rey, but they would not control the Duchess of Alderaan!

“You have given up your mother’s strictures and must be ruled by your self now,” Rey finished belatedly, knowing that she had let her sentence hang for far too long. “That must be true, for you are a married lady, whatever happens at the ball; but Rose, I must be sure, you know that every thing here is calculated to offend and dismay the leaders of Society—”

Rose looked at Rey as though she had gone mad. “Yes; I believe that is the point…?”

“I am quite beyond the pale already in Lady Snoke’s opinion, or I very soon would be in any case, but you might not be, and you must be very sure that you want to make a stand with me in this way. I could not bear to think that I had dragged you down with me, if the worst happened.”

Rose crossed her arms in a very unladylike way, which spoiled the fashionable illusion created by her sumptuous gown and made it clear that she was a plain and direct young woman. “A runaway marriage to Gretna Green, not putting me beyond the pale? Rey, have you drunk much champagne yet tonight? For I do not know what you are speaking of. The amazing thing is that you will receive a havey-cavey girl like me at all—or that’s what Society shall say.”

“But are you sure that this course…”

Anger flashed in Rose’s eyes for a minute—how dare Rey condescend to her so!—then understanding dawned. She shook her smooth-dressed head and came to sit next to Rey, taking her hands. “You are not nervous for _me_ ,” she announced. “You are nervous for yourself. Rey! I have already taken the leap; you shall do the same and we shall be perfectly fine. If all of Society shuns us, what then? Have we that many friends among the Ton to mourn?”

Rey had to admit Rose was right. Kaydel Ko Connix was the only girl she would truly regret—and Kaydel had not received vouchers to Almack’s this year and might well have been banished from Town in any case. But that was not the major source of her nervousness. “If it were the Ton alone, you would be entirely right, of course,” Rey said, “but it is someone rather closer that I worry about.”

“Your husband?” Rey nodded miserably. “You have not seen or spoken with him, _still_?” She shook her head. “Well, that’s easily mended,” Rose declared. “He must be in his chambers, or downstairs waiting for us; you might have as much as ten minutes before the guests properly begin to arrive, and you will feel much better if you clear the air.”

“But if he is—” Rey fell silent. There was no good reason for her to be continually avoiding Kylo; certainly he had stayed away of his own volition for days, but she knew that he had been in the house since that afternoon, and she had kept herself quite consciously away from him. What could he say that would distress her? She knew that he planned to go along with her scheme; she could not believe that he would have kept mum to Mrs Phasma if he intended to side with his old friends over his wife. But still she did not want to face him.

That was rank cowardice and unworthy of her. She would go down now, and before the guests arrived she would take him to the library and they would have it out, anything they had to say to each other—

There was a knock at the door. The butler. “Your grace,” he said, “the first carriages have pulled up at the door.”

“You made your bed,” Rose told Rey, “now lie in it. I’ll be right behind you.”

Rey had no more time to dither. “You are a good friend,” she told Rose, “I should be the one comforting you—”

“None of that,” Rose said. “I’m happily married; you have a husband who is a constant worry. I’m well set-up, thank you kindly. Go! Downstairs! Your guests are waiting!”

Rey went.

* * *

The townhouse of the Dukes of Alderaan was a great towering old structure, all its rooms leading onto one another; on the first floor all the doors had been thrown open, so the rooms communicated. This was where the party was to take place.

Rey had directed the servants to fill the space with candles so it blazed like high noon, and to dress each table, nook and cranny with forced flowers, bringing spring into January; yet the air was still a little cold, people not having arrived yet to fill the space. There was one benefit to the empty rooms: it was possible to see the designs Rey had caused to be chalked on the floor, to give dancers’ smooth slippers some purchase. By the end of the night they would be an unreadable mess, but now, before the celebrations began, they were plainly readable: F S and R T, Finn and Rose’s initials, intertwined in a mass of white-chalk roses. That was all, if one focussed on the center of the dance floor; but the border of the space was chalked with what first seemed like a geometric pattern, a picture-frame almost, and then resolved itself into the initials P D, repeating ad infinitum.

The chalking had turned out marvelously well, Rey thought; it was a pity that it could not be preserved. Already feet were beginning to smudge it, though only a few guests had as yet appeared. As she watched, a pair of masculine dancing-slippers led a sweeping skirt across it, clipping one corner of the design.

The dancing-slippers were familiar: yes. They belonged to her husband. He was dressed in his habitual blacks, but he looked very well, she thought: he turned, and she saw that he had pinned his neck-cloth with a ruby like a drop of blood. Had he hoped that she would wear the Jewel of Zenda, planned to match her?

But any thoughts on that front flew out of her head when she saw the woman he was escorting. It was not possible!

“Jyn?” Rey breathed, and nearly set out right through the center of the chalking to see her friend. In this glittering setting Jyn looked older than ever, and positively countrified, but she did not seem to care. How had Kylo the time to fetch her from the country? How had he convinced her to come to Town? What would be the reaction of the Ton? Surely Kylo knew that it would be the greatest scandal-broth—?

He knew, she thought. He knew it would be a scandal: but he did not care. He wanted our friend Jyn to come to my first Society ball.

The thought warmed her down to her toes, even in the cavernous cold room. But she could not go to them and tell them her happiness, for someone had appeared in the door to the great room: Countess Holdo.

“F S,” Countess Holdo read aloud, examining the floor, in a carrying voice that no one present could ignore. “R T. Well, those are not our hosts’ initials. But I cannot think what they mean.” She was truly puzzled.

Rey started to speak; but she was cut off. Finn went to Countess Holdo and made her a courtly bow. “They mean, madam,” he said, “that I have swept Miss Rose Tico off to Gretna Green; and she is now Mrs Storm.”

Holdo’s expression was nearly comical, but she reined herself back in and simply said, “My congratulations, Captain Storm. The very best of wishes, Mrs Storm.”

Rey breathed a sigh of relief. If Countess Holdo had chosen to oppose the match, she would have made it clear. Her words were the bare minimum of social approbation, but they _were_ approbation.

“Thank you,” Rose said, coming up behind her new husband in a swish of blue skirts and attended by Lieutenant Dameron. “We should very much like to have had the banns read, of course; but circumstances did not permit it.”

“Circumstances,” Countess Holdo repeated. For a moment Rey thought that she was going to launch into a lecutre, on the subject of propriety in marriage, and what parents are due; but then new figures appeared in the door, and the room fell silent. Rose’s face blanched. Some tiny, miserable part of Rey wailed that they had not been invited, and that they were rusticated in any case—how were they here?

She could not let herself despair for more than a millisecond, however. The show must go on.“Mr and Mrs Tico,” she caroled, a little too gaily, as she went to greet them. “I am so delighted to see you here.”

“What is Rose doing wearing that?” Mrs Tico said, very faintly.

“Why—it is one of my old dresses, altered to fit her; I think the color becomes her ever so much better than it becomes me,” Rey said. “Surely you knew I would undertake to dress her! But I must ask—how come you to be here?”

“A messenger from Lady Phasma,” Mr Tico supplied, “with an invitation, and the message that we would learn much to our benefit here. Why is Captain Storm with my daughter? And am I to understand that you permit Lieutenant Dameron to make free of your house?”

“About that…” Rey began to say, but she was saved by Countess Holdo.

“Mr and Mrs Tico! How lovely. You must have been delayed? Not too badly, I hope? It would have been such a shame to miss a ball in honor of your daughter’s wedding! I do understand, however, that the roads are terrible bad this time of year.”

Butter would hardly have melted in Holdo’s mouth. Rey was proud to see Rose stand a little straighter, and Finn tuck her hand in the crook of his arm with assurance. Mr and Mrs Tico exchanged an astonished glance, and then—“Yes, Countess, we did find the roads shocking,” Mr Tico said, just at the same time as Mrs Tico said “And let me look at you, my dear girl—my dear married girl!”

Lieutenant Dameron, seeing where he was not wanted, offered Rey his arm and directed her over to where the servants were just putting the finishing touches on a tower of champagne glasses. “By Jove, did you see that!” he crowed. “Didn’t think the old Countess would tip our way there, for a second! But she’s a rum ‘un, and she’s snowed them. Can’t disagree with a patroness of Almack’s, can they? They’ll have to pretend all’s right as rain now!”

Rey laughed with relief, and joined him in a toast to the confusion of the Ticos; but her mind was occupied by Mrs Phasma, and what would happen when the _other_ patronesses of Almack’s arrived.

* * *

Kylo identified what he was feeling as anxiety _._ He did not like it.

He had been sure, very sure, that causing Miss Jyn Erso to attend Rey’s party was a stroke of genius. He had the impression, from Miss Erso’s general demeanor and from the way Rey spoke of her, that she very much regretted not being permitted to enter polite society; and he knew that one of the greatest black marks against him was the way he had spoken of women of easy virtue. No: ‘women of easy virtue’ was precisely the way he was _not_ to speak of them!

Jyn had been pliable enough: she had turned her gimlet stare on him for a moment and said “You want me to be your tool, to impress Her Grace—eh?” but she had not refused his invitation. He had asked her what she would like to see in London, and they had gone to see Lord Elgin’s marbles, which she had much admired; they had been drawn into a debate about whether Elgin had indeed ‘looted’ the Parthenon, or whether he had worked to preserve and display a piece of history. She had assumed that Kylo’s position would be the latter, and had been surprised to find it the former, and they had the liveliest argument all the way back to the hôtel where she was to stay.

Returning punctually to deliver her to the party, Kylo had been a little dismayed to discover the poor state of her dress: he ought to have taken her to a modiste, not to a gallery. But this, he reflected, was part of the great change he must make. He ought worry less about being right and proper and fashionable and more about Christian kindness.

So. The party. And so, his wife.

She did not summon him before the guests arrived. He could not fault her for that. He did not know how to reunite with her, either. He threw himself into conversation with Jyn, distracting himself with the particulars of the canal project, of her father’s health, of events in Alderaan Dean and Alderaan Rise.

When Rey finally appeared, resplendent in cloth-of-gold and wearing the Jewel of Zenda on her brow, he wanted nothing more than to speak to her. Every part of him longed to cross the floor in a few loping steps and to bask in her approval; he had wanted her to say “yes, you brought my friend Miss Erso, what a thoughtful thing to do” and to take his arm and to make everything all right again.

It was not to be. Countess Holdo arrived, and monopolized Rey; Holdo had never liked him, and he did not think Rey would appreciate his interference. Then Mr and Mrs Tico came on the scene, and he was glad he had not intervened: he did not have the first thing to say to them. So he stood, and he felt anxiety, and he wished (if he could not speak with his wife) to banish that feeling.

More guests were arriving. He knew his duty, and knew that by performing it he could distract himself. “You will excuse me,” he said to Jyn, and went forth to greet the arrivals. Then there were gentlemen who wished to play a hand of whist, and wished him to help make up a set; and there were other gentlemen who must be convinced to partner wallflowers, and so nearly half the evening passed, and he did not have time to worry about his wife.

Finally it was nearly time for the dancing to begin. It occurred to him that his mother had not come, but then, if she were to come, it would be very late: the Prince Regent was never early. It was more troubling that neither Lady Snoke nor Mrs Phasma nor Lord Hux were present—

Just as he thought this, as he realized that without the leaders of the _ton_ the party could never quite be counted a success, he glanced up and saw them in the door, just making their entrance.

The three were dreadful tall figures. Hux was impeccable in navy blue, his neckcloth in a pristine Mathematical; Phasma’s dress was red as blood, and Lady Snoke was a column of flowing cloth-of-gold, as fashionable and yet as sexless as any creature that had ever lived. Kylo watched as they took in the scene, the ostrich-feathers on Phasma’s headdress bobbing as they descended the stairs to the main room’s floor.

Rey had seen them too. She had been drinking a glass of negus with Rose Tico—no, _Mrs. Storm_ —and some of the misses they had come out with; but now she took Rose’s arm and together they pushed their way through the crowd. She was not going to shrink from the fight, Kylo realized. She was going to confront Lady Snoke head-on.

Without thinking about it, he found himself working his way through the well-dressed crowd. He did not know what good he could do by being present, but he surely could not leave Rey alone to face them. It was hot and stuffy now, the room having long ago filled up; he dashed sweat from his forehead as he finally, finally approached his former friends.

“Am I to congratulate you on such a match?” Lady Snoke was saying to Mrs. Storm, not bothering to hide behind a mask of amity.

“Why, yes,” Kylo said, “you are indeed to congratulate her.”

Rey, who had opened her mouth to defend her friend, shut it again, and stared openly at her husband. She might have expected any thing from him, but not the behavior of a white knight.

“How can I?” Lady Snoke said. Her assessing gaze never left Rose’s face. Kylo knew that expression: he had squirmed under it many times. The kindness she had lavished on him had lasted only so long: then it had been withdrawn, and interspersed with the worst censure, and the censure retracted and replaced with affection for seemingly no reason, and the affection turned again to coldness—a bumpy ride indeed.

Rose had never known kindness from Lady Snoke, not in the least, but she was bearing up well, holding her back straight and her head high. Kylo’s memories of her were of a drab little thing, outfitted in too many pale furbelows and very attentive to her parents’ wishes, but they were hardly coherent with the woman he saw now, radiant in rich royal blue and utterly scornful of even Lady Snoke’s hauteur.

“How can I congratulate this young person,” Lady Snoke said, “when she has wed herself to someone so wholly beneath her station—a man who was not in Trade but actually in service? How dare you promote such a mésalliance, and celebrate it under your own roof? Of your bride I had little hope; but I had hoped better from you.”

She was pitching her voice quite low, Kylo realized. She was pitching it so that it would not carry. Those outside their little knot would not know anything was wrong, unless they were great students of body language; Lady Snoke was making sure of that.

He was seized with the conviction that any thing Lady Snoke wanted, she most certainly would not get. He spoke loudly—louder than he thought he had ever spoken in a ballroom before. “We are gathered here today in the spirit of Friendship, madam,” he said, “and to celebrate the marriage of two persons who most sincerely love each other. If you are incapable of entering into the spirit of this occasion, I recommend that you take yourself elsewhere.”

Snoke seemed to disbelieve her ears. Her expression was unreadable. Lord Hux had no hesitations, however. “Do you speak this way to a lady?” he asked. “My God, Ren, your wife has turned you into a street-rat as well!”

“Repeat that again,” Kylo said, “or any other insult to my wife, and you may choose your seconds.”

“I’m amazed that you darkened my door at all, Lord Hux,” Rey added, in a conversational tone. “Surely you knew that Mr and Mrs Tico would be present, and Mrs Storm. I am surprised that you dare show your face before those you have wronged so completely.”

At this Lady Snoke found her tongue. “The fact that you would have them in your house shows only your total lack of dignity and respect for the honor of Alderaan,” she said, her voice as cool and snakelike as ever. “Miss Tico was a little lightskirt, and she got what she deserved; Mrs Storm is likely the same, if she would marry a man so far below her. Your house will be known as little more than a brothel before long—and you shall have only yourself to blame. You shall come to regret your behavior this day!”

She made to sweep out, but Kylo laughed then, bitterly, and she could not resist listening to his rejoinder. “I ought to have a worse reputation than either of the Miss Ticos, as a philanderer, with all the girls you’ve insinuated I ruined,” he said, and he knew that all his guests could hear him. They could have heard a pin drop. “I ought to have a worse name too for all the money I’ve taken from you, all the debts of honor I have incurred and you have paid. See! I admit them. I have been governed by you and owned by you. I have voted as you wished me to vote. No more! You may crawl back to where-ever you wish to go. You may eat your dry sandwiches and drink your lemonade at your precious Almack’s. But you may not come here again—not any of you.”

He stood with his hands clenched at his sides. In a moment he would punch something. No: he would not do that. He could not do that. Not in a ballroom. Not with his wife by his side—

She came to him, and wrapped one of her hands around one of his. He unclenched his fist, let her slip her hand within his. It was small and the glove that encased it was cold, but it felt like an anchor, securing him to this place, to his convictions, to the choice he had just made. He looked down at her, mostly as a way to not look at his former mentor, and felt a sudden sense of rightness, of security. She was dressed in cloth-of-gold, in the same style as Lady Snoke; her jewels were rubies, and red was a color that both Snoke and Phasma favored. Yet she reminded him of them not at all, but only of his own mother, in the good times, when he had not yet been disappointed by her failings.

That thought—the thought of his mother—nearly broke his resolve, for he could not remember his childhood without a pang and a desire for escape, the escape Lady Snoke once had offered him. He began to feel ashamed, and uncertain, despite Rey’s appreciative expression, perhaps her _loving_ expression—and then someone began to applaud.

The clapping rang out loud in the silent ballroom, but it did not come from the floor, from the whist table, from the ranks of chairs where the elderly ladies sat. It came from the doorway, at the top of the stairs. There, standing in the greatest possible splendor, was Lady Leia, resplendent in a gown of shimmering white as pure as any débutante’s. And there next to her, tremendously fat and creaking and yet somehow preserving the handsome countenance for which he had been famous in his youth, was the Prince Regent himself.

“Well done, man!” the Prince Regent declared, “I hate an old cat—no time for ‘em! Mushroom, that’s what Eustacia Snoke has always been. Yes, I speak of you, Lady Snoke! Get out, ma’am, I don’t want you at this party; you ain’t fashionable. Take your friends with you, that’s it. And now—who’s this delight in the pretty blue frock? Musicians! Won’t we dance?”

Rey’s little hand slipped out from Kylo’s, and around his waist, to give him a very improper sort of sidelong embrace; he found that he did not mind even such a vast disregard for protocol, not at this moment. Some sort of a chain was unwinding from around his heart, a chain which had been locked there for many a year; and as the Prince Regent took Mrs Storm’s hand and lead her to the floor to open the dancing, Lady Leia swept down and kissed Kylo and Rey each soundly on one cheek, and said “I knew it would all turn out well in the end; not to say I had any thing to do with it, but I had great faith in you,” and she was right—it was all turning out well in the end.


	28. Chapter 28

It was the wee hours of the morning, and all the other guests had left, when Jyn Erso convinced Poe and Finn that it was truly time to get their beloved Rose home—she had, with that unerring instinct belonging to aging matrons, divined that they were all residing at the same refined hôtel, and that with their company she might avoid taxing Lord Alderaan for an escort home.

The ball had been a success on every level. Rey had succeeded in utterly debasing herself in the eyes of the haut ton, had convinced a good quarter of the ladies that she was indeed the mistress of a house of ill repute, and had broken with Lady Snoke, Mrs Phasma and Lord Hux for ever; but she had also gained a great champion in Prinny, had delighted the more dashing set with her obvious disregard for custom, had enchanted the wide-eyed youth by championing Captain and Mrs Storm’s so-romantic elopement, and achieved a sort of detente between Rose and her astonished parents.

This last had rested largely on Rose’s newfound popularity with the Regent; he had danced twice with her and treated her with extreme condescension. Poe and Finn did not like it, of course: if Finn was not aware of the Regent’s reputation, Poe certainly was, and informed him in the most colorful terms. But one could not argue with royalty, and Rose was certainly to be trusted. Therefore the evening passed off, if not without some grumbling, without a hitch.

Rey surveyed the floor (now totally denuded of chalk), the refreshment tables (now totally denuded of food) and the general wreck of her home. She did not envy the servants their task, and made a note to give them an extra half-day off—it would have to be staggered, to keep the house staffed, but they could very well manage on a cold picnic lunch one or two days the next week. Then her attention was drawn to a tear in a drapery, caused by who-knew what guest, and the observation that someone had carelessly set a cup on the window-sill and no one had found it yet; Rey was consumed with housewifery for a moment, and forgot that dawn was approaching.

“You need not worry.” Kylo said. “You have told me often enough that we need servants to run Duke’s Alderaan—so let the servants here do their jobs.”

“It is quite a different thing,” Rey argued, in reflex. “That is a grand old pile—this is only a town-house, and in any case I am only taking an inventory of what needs to be done.”

“The inventory can wait,” he said. “Will you come to bed?”

His face was expressionless, but Rey knew that was a mask: her husband was ice and fire, and when he was iciest there was always something burning beneath. She had seen it throughout the evening. He had danced with her, following the Regent and Rose onto the floor, and every controlled motion had been as eloquent as a speech. Some wild part of her had wanted to slip away, to pull him with her into the library or up stairs to their private rooms, and to forget the party and their guests: but that was impossible.

It was not impossible now, however.

Rey found it hard to speak, so she followed her husband up the stairs. There was too much to be said, and she did not know where to begin.

But perhaps much did not need to be said after all. At the top of the stairs, he waited; she took his hand and led him to her bedroom. He hesitated on the threshold.

“It’s strange,” he said. “I never came here—never entered this room.”

Rey glanced around. It had seemed obvious to her that this was the room meant for the lady of the house. It did not adjoin Kylo’s bedchamber, but a rather grander one that clearly ought to belong to a Duke; it had a commanding view of the square, and its aging rococo decorations were clearly meant to appeal to a feminine sensibility. Then again, she realized, it was just like Kylo to banish himself to the smallest room, to ignore his droits and to pretend he was doing nothing odd. He had spent years ignoring Duke’s Alderaan: why should his home in town be any different?

“Was it your mother’s?” she asked.

He blinked. “Yes,” he said, “before things went—poorly, with my father.”

That was it, then. But Rey did not plan to let him wallow in the past. “Well,” she said, “it’s my room now.”

He looked about and slowly, a smile broke across that compelling face. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s your room now.”

The intimacies of the marriage-bed followed, to the satisfaction of all; but afterwards Kylo felt somewhat melancholy. He had achieved his goals; Rey was his again, and had shown him all that sweet wantonness that he desperately desired. He was free of fetters he had not realized he wore; it might have been sad to say good-bye to Hux and Phasma, but they had so thoroughly disgusted him that he could not regret losing their friendship; for the first time in many years he felt that he looked the world square in the face, no shying away, no hiding, nothing he had to be ashamed of.

Yet he felt melancholy. He curled his arms tighter around Rey, so small but so warm, and whispered, without knowing what he said, “I hope I did not—ruin Luke for you.”

She twisted in his embrace, pushed him away so she could look into his face. “You did,” she said, “a little.” He tried to look away, but she wouldn’t let him, forced him to keep looking into those big brown eyes. “Every one has their faults,” she said. “Your mother has them; your father has them; Luke has them—I have them, and so do you.”

“I wish to rectify those faults.”

“Yes,” she said, a little impatient, “I know you do, and I am grateful; I am ever so glad. I think I love you for it more than for any other thing. But I expect you will fail quite a lot, and so will I. We will have to live with each other.”

She seemed to have come to this conclusion, and quite easily accepted it, and moved on. Kylo, however, could not take it so lightly. When they married he had thought only of possessing his wife; when he had come to her later he had focused on the moment, the feeling, the way she smiled, the way they touched and moved together. He had learned, long ago, not to think too hard about the future: the future was empty.

It was not empty now. It would not be easy. The enormity of the task stunned him. Before Rey, he had been slaved to Lady Snoke, following her orders and otherwise merely acting out of blind instinct. It was a great temptation to trade her rule for Rey’s, to make Rey his lodestone and follow her doggedly, completely: but that was another sort of slavery. He did not think Rey wanted a subject. She wanted him to make his own choices, for his own reasons—to have inside him his own compass, to think with good principles about his own actions.

It was possible; he knew it was possible; but it did mean they would disagree. Sometimes.

“I still do not believe you ought to have promoted a match between Miss Tico and Mr Storm,” he said, slowly. “It is well that they are happy, but I cannot believe that happiness will last, with such a gulf between their stations.”

Rey looked at him, in surprise. She said, “But you…” Then, realization dawned. He could see it; Rey’s expressions were transparent as ever. She had worked out that he was testing her, making sure that he was _permitted_ to differ. “Well,” she said, “if it does not work out, at least they were allowed to make their own mistakes. Time will tell. But I think you are wrong, Your Grace.”

“How?”

“I was further below you than Finn was below Rose,” she said, “and I have every hope that our happiness will last—for ever.”

That, he had not expected. He threw back his head and laughed, and startled to see her serious husband so joyful, Rey laughed too. He felt the laughter where their bodies touched, bellies shaking, and it felt like Rey was right. This happiness would last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers, I am sorry this final chapter took so long—and that it is short, and doesn't include more erotica! Ha. I wanted to post it for you two weeks ago, but somehow, it just didn't feel right. I tried different versions of it, I tried to write the epilogue as I planned—nothing was coming out the way I thought it ought to. I think I didn't want to let go of this story I've been working on so long! Finally, I landed on keeping it short and sweet.
> 
> I'm sure some of you would like to know what would have happened in the epilogue, however! So, here it is—
> 
> Two years later, Rey and Kylo are living at Ahch-To Hall, having come to the conclusion that Duke's Alderaan ought to be rebuilt—but not as a ducal seat. They've turned it into a larger orphanage, which also provides help and housing for unwed mothers. Jyn has finished her canal, successfully, and Alderaan Rise is quickly becoming a miniature center of manufacturing. With the canal done and her father having passed away, Jyn was free to move to London, where she lives with Leia and Holdo (who has given up Almacks for good and is now indulging her inner bluestocking). 
> 
> Finn was sent to the Continent; Rose and Poe followed him, and they've sent back many letters detailing their thrilling adventures. The real reason they all traveled so far, however, was to track down Paige, who did _not_ die, and help her get back on her feet—which she is beginning to do.
> 
> As for Snoke, Phasma and Hux, though they've held onto Almacks as a stomping ground, they found their circle lessened of late... no longer do they rule with an iron fist.
> 
> Oh, and Rey and Kylo have twins. ;)
> 
> \--------
> 
> I hope you all have enjoyed reading this story as much as I have writing it. Thank you to everyone who's commented and kudosed—you really have made it an incredible experience to write!!


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